Okay but the Batfam thinking reader still doesn't know their secret identities and using it to their advantage to give into their desires without the guilt after saving her. The reader playing along because she's been lusting after them for years now.
Nothing like bringing Batman/Robins/Batgirls into your bed to thank them for saving you.
OH?? You little freaks/pos
This is actually canon to the pseudocest universe, I think I put that in once. But NOT canon to the Clingy Bruce AU.
Warning: pseudocest, identity porn(?), shame, they think the reader doesn’t know, but she knows, female!reader because anon used she/her pronouns to describe reader, SMUT, OOC behaviour, ‘daddy’ used in a sexual context, etc.
(Specific smut warnings: pseudocest, daddy kink, implied somnophilia, dub-con but only from the batfam’s perspective MOSTLY, overstimulation, edging, whining & whimpering, we’re torturing this family, the reader can get a bit mean, oral sex, penetrative sex, fucked dumb (?), Tim can only really curse for his part so I don’t know if it counts, grinding, mentions of masturbation, etc.)
BRUCE WAYNE
This one is the worst of the bunch because this guy is a FATHER FIGURE. He shouldn’t be doing this, not with a civilian and certainly not with you.
Half-aware that you have some inkling as to who is behind the mask but chooses to believe that you and him are both in denial about it. (He thinks you’re also choosing to believe it’s not him behind the mask but you are fully aware and accepting of it.)
Very hard/firm on you during the actual act but not cruel or particularly rough. He likes to take his time—to enjoy you completely and as much as he can before you are inevitably ripped from his hands and move on and get a partner who will be able to love you and touch you and hold you in all the way that Bruce cannot and that Batman cannot fully act upon.
He doesn’t know that you’re here to stay.
You don’t know if you were put in this position because he didn’t want you looking at his face for too long and somehow figuring out his identity or if he just wanted you like this.
“Ah!”
But you don’t really care.
Each one of his thrusts was harsh—slow things that almost knock you forward if not for the firm grip he has on your nape, pushing your face down into the pillow.
His low, modulated voice fills the room with rough mumbled words that just barely reach you and groans that vibrate through your flesh and have you clenching and gushing around him. Greedy like he’s the only man you ever want inside you like this.
“Like that?” He grunts, giving a hard snap of his hips that have you crying out and nodding your head mindlessly to whatever he said.
His free hand is low on your back and rising, tracing your spine like it was something miraculous to worship, like the arch of your back was something to commit to memory.
“Fuck- take it,” he hisses as you clench around him, trying to drag him in deeper, trying to get him to go faster, harder. “Take it, sweetheart, take it-“
The little pet name slips out naturally, almost instinctively. It’s what he calls you when you’re sleepy in the mornings and what he calls you when you call him crying to pick you up from school or whatever else.
It’s what he calls his daughter.
And, for some reason, it sends a flood of heat through your bones, turning you to mush at a simple word.
“Daddy,” you whine, legs trembling with an ache beyond you.
And he moans, crumbling at the sound of you whimpering beneath him, for him, though not really, and fucks into you harder, faster. “It’s okay, it’s okay-“ he pants. “I’ve got you sweetheart, I’ve got you- I’m going make it all better.”
“Daddy’s cock is going to make it all go away.”
Super duper deep in denial when he’s forced to confront the reality of the situation and that you know that it’s him behind the mask and want him anyway—maybe even because of it.
But he is also literally never letting you leave. Ever.
It’s this weird thing where he literally refuses to accept it and refuses to act upon any urges as Bruce until you get fed up and wake him up one morning by riding him.
DICK GRAYSON
Also deep in denial but in a slightly different way because he’s not your dad, he’s your older brother. (Even though you’re technically not related.)
Probably masturbated to a few photos of you and blocked it out afterwards.
Completely unaware that you know it’s him behind the mask and both consciously and subconsciously ignoring everything that says otherwise.
He curls his hands firmly over your thighs, helping you sink down on him by steadying you but doing it more so just to cling to your skin, to tether himself to something solid as he watches with wide eyes behind his domino mask as your cunt slowly, carefully swallows up every inch of him.
He’s gasping from the moment you graze the tip of him. His eyes are rolling back when you take him up to the hilt.
Beautiful. Your cunt is squeezing and dripping all around him, gripping at him like a hot, wet fist and the only thing he can think is—‘You’re beautiful.’
He doesn’t say it, he can’t with the way you’re beginning to ride him and leaving the usually chatty man speechless with the way you take him so easily, so eagerly.
But he knows it’s plain on his face, or what you can see of his face.
Face flushed, ears red, panting, hands gripping tight on your hips and thighs. He feels pathetic. He feels dirty. He feels needy.
But you’re gorgeous like this. Because you’re panting. You’re moaning as you lift yourself up, up, up until there’s danger of him accidentally slipping out then taking him in full all over again.
Beautiful.
“Love- fuck-“ he finds himself saying, whimpering with his skin thrumming a low tune of wrong, wrong, wrong. “Fucking love this cunt, baby- fucking love it-“
You smile and giggle at him, gasping when he flexes his hips upwards, completely oblivious to the fact that it’s your older brother who’s beneath you, that beneath the mask of Nightwing lay Dick Grayson and his depraved desires.
You are FULLY aware.
You both love each other a lot in this.
However, that love is inherently sinful due to the nature of it.
You don’t care but he does.
But it doesn’t matter, really, because even when he does find out and gets angry that you knew for all this time, he’ll still be the one crawling into your bed, crawling into your heart, and whining against your neck because it’s all he wants, all he needs.
CASSANDRA CAIN
Practically roleplay to her, honestly.
Finds out that you’re fully aware when you smile up at her in the middle of it from where you lay between her legs. You’re too relaxed, too willing, and looking just a bit too mischievous to not know.
Can’t find it in her to care when you swoop back down and begin to devour her feverishly.
Her hands grasps at the sheets helplessly, clawing at them and bunching them up in her hands like a lifeline. Cass can’t help but try to grind her hips against your face, trying to get more, but you press her hips back down and leave her whining and whining as your tongue slips inside her, the hot muscle thrusting in and out with an erratic sort of worship that she didn’t know you had in you.
She feels like she’s spinning out of control, tumbling out on the other side of paradise. “____,” she half-sobs, half-moans. You’ve been doing this to her for hours, eating her out, shoving your fingers inside of her, making an absolute mess of her cunt, but each time she gets close, each time she almost cums, you pull away with a wide grin on your face.
Sadistic.
“‘Lease,” she slurs, tongue heavy in her mouth and fumbling. “Please, I wanna- I wanna-“
“Shh,” you hush her gently like you weren’t being entirely cruel and unfair to her. “You said I could do whatever I wanted to you, you said I could have my way.”
Cass whines, something desperate and wanting crawling up her throat. “I’ve been- I’ve been-“
“I know, I know,” you murmur, placing a sweet little kiss on her clit that wracks through her entire body like an electrical shock. “You’ve been so, so good for me, baby. But you’re just gonna have to wait a little bit longer.”
She does sob when you slip your fingers back inside her and curl them in a way that has her just on the edge of it all.
“Just a little bit longer.”
Comes out the other end dazed, panting, dehydrated, a little scared of you, and way too attracted to you.
You’re a civilian, dude, how did you tire her out like this? (Because she let you.)
JASON TODD
The most romantic one of out all of them but still has an image to keep up.
Genuinely kind and gentle with you (even though he does make fun of you a bit) but also doesn’t know where to put his hands half the time.
Does not think you know who he is and that you have a thing for serial killers or some weird shit.
Jason is entirely wrapped around you and you around him.
Your legs are wound around his hips, ankles locked at his lower back, and arms around his torso, clinging to him tightly and pressing him down further against you. He’s got his face shoved into your collarbones, cock shoved deep enough inside you that you could feel him in your throat, that you could feel him everywhere, and with his arms wrapped around your waist, tugging you even closer, if possible, you almost felt like one being. Like there was no beginning of you and no end of him.
“Red-“ you gasp when he grinds hard into you, leaving you to throw your head back against the pillows.
He leans back only to come down and press sloppy kisses from the middle of your collarbone up to your throat, coming up to your jaw, and then, after a half-second of hesitation, ending at your mouth. You whimper into his mouth and he swallows the sound up with reverence. “Yeah, yeah,” he pants into your mouth, tilting his head to the side to deepen the kiss, chuckling when you accept him almost instantly. “I know.”
And then he’s sliding one of his arms out of the hold he has on your waist and sliding a gloved hand down, down, down your abdomen to that vulnerable little clit of yours.
He shudders at the feeling of your flesh beneath his fingers, cock twitching inside you. Then, his fingers are moving, pressed into your clit and massaging little circles into the nub that are driving you further and further into insanity.
He gasps into your mouth when buck your hips up against his. “I know.”
You may not love him. Hell, you may not even like him. But you like Red Hood. You like being beneath him. And maybe that’s enough for now.
Loves you very much.
He cares about you like a LOT in this and I hope that’s clear.
Will be having a bit of a revelation when he finds out that you do know because what do you mean you want all of him? What do you mean you don’t just want the Red Hood but that you also want Jason too? Crazy stuff.
TIM DRAKE
He does not know that you know and is taking full advantage of it.
There is still shame there of course, he’s not a complete degenerate, but y’know, not enough.
His skin is boiling. There’s a popping and crackling heat that has settled in his nervous system and-
He muffles a groan by pressing his lips together as you lick one long strip on the underside of his cock. Your eyes are dead set on his own, a mischievous, almost playful light in them as you take the tip of him into your mouth and begin to suck.
Tim fumbles to grab onto the desk beneath him, gripping onto the wood for dear life as the warm wet heat of your mouth wraps around him entirely.
“Fuck-“ he mutters, knuckles going white from the hold he has on the desk. “Fuck, fuck-“
There’s a low burning shame in him, an ember at the pit of his stomach, but it’s far too easy to ignore when you swallow around him and begin to take him deeper-
“Oh, fuck-“ Tim is weak.
“Oh, shit- just like that, just like that-“
Thinks he’s the one with the cameras. The one watching.
(He is terribly wrong and he soon finds out about this when after he finds out that you knew all this time, you lift up a usb drive with a smile, ready to blackmail him if necessary to make him keep quiet.)
(He has never been more attracted to a person ever.)
DAMIAN WAYNE
This one is going to be the most sfw out of all of them.
This boy is a ROMANTIC. He’s going to want to take things slow but may not be able to.
Genuinely thinks you’re the prettiest thing ever and wants to do all that weird couple-y shit he used to hate but is now realizing maybe he was just jealous of.
He’s kissing at your neck—soft, gentle, light things that have you giggling against him. (He wishes he could keep the sound in a bottle.)
Your hands are in his hair, holding him to your skin, holding him, and scraping your fingers and nails across his scalp pleasantly.
There’s something bittersweet about it. About the fact that Robin gets this but Damian doesn’t. (And may never.)
Robin gets to kiss you, Robin gets to hold you, Robin gets grind up against you until he’s on the edge of bursting and does, and you let it all happen.
But Damian is just your little brother. Damian is just the boy who climbed into your bed for comfort and not for your body.
His hands tighten on you. You let them.
He wishes he could hold you like other men do—publicly.
(And he can’t help but feel jealous even as he bucks his hips up against your thigh and you giggle, hands reaching for his belt.
Because Damian doesn’t get this, Robin does.)
He is going to be in so much agony when he does quit being Robin and pursues the medical field. (He thinks he’s losing you.)
So very jealous—not only of himself but literally of anything and everyone because he’s insecure about his place beside you and what he wants from you.
Yandere Tim Drake x Soulmate Reader (Warnings: very brief mention of past sh, unconscious groping, etc.)
Everyone had a soulmate.
It was simply a fact of life, as ordinary and inevitable as the tide rolling against the shore or the sunrise spilling gold across Gotham’s skyline each morning.
Most people shared pain.
A scraped knee for one meant a sting of sympathy for the other. Broken bones, headaches, paper cuts, small reminders that somewhere in the world existed another person tethered to your life by an invisible thread.
Others shared emotions, dreams, memories.
Tim Drake had words.
Two simple words etched into the inside of his left wrist in neat black script.
That’s mine
His mother had cried when she first saw them.
Not because she was upset, quite the opposite. Janet Drake had spent years documenting soulmate phenomena across the globe, and a verbal bond was extraordinarily rare.
His father had immediately started researching statistics.
Less than three percent of soulmates received words. Less than .5 percent remembered hearing them.
“You’ll know them the moment they speak,” his mother told him one evening as she adjusted the cuff of his tiny dress shirt before another charity gala. “Isn’t that exciting?”
Tim looked down at his wrist.
That’s mine
“I guess.”
His mother laughed softly. “You don’t sound very excited.”
Tim shrugged. At eight years old, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel.
Soulmates mattered. Everyone knew that.
His classmates talked about theirs constantly.
Some compared phantom aches from their shared-pain bonds. Others spent recess imagining how their lives would be together.
Tim listened more than he spoke.
He preferred facts. Questions. Patterns.
How could words know who they belonged to before either person was born? Were they predetermined? Did people still have choices? What happened if soulmates never met?
His teachers rarely had answers.
His parents were usually too busy to discuss it.
The Drakes loved him. Tim knew they did. But love and presence weren’t always the same thing. His father spent most of his time working. His mother traveled constantly. Some months, he saw them more in framed photos scattered around the house than in person.
The manor was always full of staff and tutors and carefully planned schedules, yet somehow felt impossibly empty.
Tim grew used to eating dinner with adults paid to be there.
He learned early how to entertain himself.
Books, puzzles, documentaries, the small television in his room, where he rewatched recordings of the Flying Graysons until he knew every movement by heart.
People left. That was simply another fact of life.
His parents always came home eventually, but there was always another trip. Another meeting. Another promise of next week.
Sometimes, late at night, Tim would trace the letters on his wrist with his thumb and wonder.
That’s mine
Possessive. Confident.
The opposite of everything Tim felt.
Whoever they were, they sounded like someone who knew exactly what they wanted.
Someone who would point at him without hesitation and say, Mine.
The thought warmed something quiet inside his chest.
Maybe one day there would be someone who chose him first. Someone who stayed.
“Timothy!”
He glanced up from his wrist. His mother’s assistant stood in the doorway.
“Your parents are leaving for the airport.”
Tim slipped his sleeve back down. “Okay.” He followed the familiar route downstairs.
His father kissed the top of his head absentmindedly while checking his watch. His mother promised she’d bring him something back from Singapore.
Three weeks, this time. Maybe four.
“We love you, sweetheart.”
Tim smiled because he knew he was supposed to. “I love you too.”
Then the front doors closed behind them. The house settled into silence.
Tim looked down at his wrist.
That’s mine
Someday, he thought, he’d meet the person those words belonged to.
Someday, there would be someone who wouldn’t leave.
He had no way of knowing that in less than a year, standing on a crowded beach with salt in the air and sand clinging to his toes, he’d hear those exact words spoken aloud.
Or that he would spend the rest of his life trying to find them again.
Everyone had soulmates.
You grew up with the knowledge the same way you grew up knowing the sky was blue and the ocean was deep.
It simply was.
Some people shared pain. Others shared dreams or emotions or marks or memories.
Your soulmate had words.
Four of them, written in dark script along the inside of your wrist.
Can I see that?
Your dad had laughed the first time you asked what they meant.
“I don’t know, Bub. That’s the fun part.”
You traced the letters with your fingertip. “Do you think they’re nice?”
“I think,” he said, setting down the book he’d been reading, “that someone who asks permission before touching your things probably has good manners.”
You considered that very seriously. That sounded nice. Most things about soulmates sounded nice.
You didn’t think about it much. Your soulmate existed somewhere in the world. Eventually, you’d meet them.
Until then, there were more important things to worry about.
Like whether you could convince dad to cut the crusts off your sandwiches. Or whether the stray cat behind your building would finally let you pet it. Or if you’d be allowed to stay up past your bedtime to watch Cartoon Network.
Life was small in the way childhood always was.
Warm hands on your shoulders. Stories before bed. The magical fairies who always put your favorite snacks in your bag. Someone waiting for you after school.
You never doubted that you were loved. Not once.
Even when your dad got busy. Even when money was tight. Even when life became messy in all the ordinary ways life tended to.
You were never alone.
So while other children treated soulmates like missing pieces, you thought of yours more like a surprise waiting to happen.
Someone to look forward to. Who would eventually become important. But not yet. For now, your world was made up of smaller certainties.
The comfort of home. The sound of laughter from the kitchen. The warmth of sunlight spilling across your bedroom floor. And the beach.
You loved the beach.
Especially during summer.
The wind carried the sharp scent of salt through the air as waves crashed against the shore in a rhythm you could never quite predict.
Dad sat further back beneath a striped umbrella with a book open in his lap.
Every so often, he looked up to make sure you were still nearby.
You always were.
You darted along the shoreline barefoot, collecting seashells and smooth pieces of sea glass in a small plastic bucket.
The ocean foam chased your feet. Seagulls cried overhead. Children laughed nearby.
Everything felt bright.
A stronger gust of wind swept across the beach. Something light slipped from your hands and tumbled away across the sand.
You gasped.
Then immediately took off after it, your laughter carried away by the ocean breeze.
Tim almost said no when his mother asked.
Not because he didn't want to go, but cause experience had taught him not to get too excited.
Plans changed. Flights got moved forward. Meetings ran long. Emergencies happened.
He'd learned years ago that disappointment stung less when he expected it.
So when Janet Drake appeared in the doorway of the study where he'd been working through a puzzle book and said, "Your father and I have the whole weekend free," Tim had looked up suspiciously.
"The whole weekend?"
His father leaned against the doorframe behind her, smiling. "The whole weekend."
No phones. No assistants. No business dinners. Just the three of them.
Tim waited for the catch.
There wasn't one.
"Anywhere you want to go," his mother promised. "Your choice."
For a moment, Tim considered museums. The aquarium. The planetarium. Then he thought about summer heat and salty air and waves crashing against the shore.
"The beach," he decided.
His parents exchanged a surprised look.
"The beach?" his father repeated.
Tim nodded.
He'd only been a handful of times before, always during business trips when his parents could spare an hour or two.
He liked it. The patterns of the waves. The seashells hidden in the sand. The endless horizon stretching farther than he could see.
Mostly, he liked that people stayed at the beach. No one seemed in a hurry there.
"Then the beach it is."
True to their word, they left early the next morning.
The drive felt strange in the best way. His mother sang quietly along to the radio. His father let Tim pick the music. Nobody checked their watches. Nobody took business calls. For once, Tim had their full attention.
The feeling settled warm and unfamiliar in his chest.
By the time they reached the coast, the sun sat high overhead.
The beach was crowded.
Children raced through the surf. Couples crowded beneath colorful umbrellas. The air smelled like sunscreen and salt.
His parents set up their chairs a short distance from the water.
His mother pressed sunscreen into his hands with strict instructions to reapply every few hours.
His father handed him a towel for swimming.
Tim smiled.
Then headed toward the shoreline. The ocean foam curled around his ankles as he walked.
He searched carefully through the wet sand, studying each shell before deciding whether it was worth keeping.
Behind him, he could hear his parents talking softly.
Every so often, he glanced back to make sure they were still there.
They always were.
A sudden gust of wind swept across the beach.
Something colorful tumbled through the air a few feet ahead of him.
A small shovel.
Tim moved before he thought about it, stepping forward and catching it before another gust could carry it away.
He turned it over in his hands. Bright plastic swayed lazily in the sea breeze.
Then he heard a voice behind him.
"That's mine!"
The world stopped.
His breath caught. Heat rushed through his body so suddenly it made him dizzy.
Slowly, impossibly slowly, Tim looked down.
The words on the inside of his wrist burned.
That's mine
Every sound around him faded beneath the rushing in his ears.
He knew those words. He'd traced them countless times. Dreamed about them. Wondered about them. And now they belonged to a voice. To a person.
Tim turned around and saw you.
You stood a few feet away, slightly out of breath from running, your bucket swinging from one hand.
You were younger than him. Seven, maybe.
Sand clung to your knees, your hair messy from the wind, and there was a tiny gap where one of your front teeth had recently fallen out.
You looked completely ordinary.
And somehow, you were the most important person Tim had ever seen.
You frowned when he didn’t say anything. “Um… my shovel?”
Right. The shovel.
Tim handed it back with shaking fingers.
Then, before he could lose his nerve, he blurted out the question you’d imagined hearing for years.
“Can I see that?”
Your eyes widened. Then, almost immediately, your gaze dropped to your own wrist.
Tim followed it.
When you looked back up at him, confusion and wonder mixed across your face.
Slowly, you held out your arm.
His words.
His exact words.
Tim stared. His soulmate. He’d found them.
You stared at him with equal fascination. “You’re my soulmate?” The question came out small.
Tim felt something inside his chest loosen for the first time in his life. “Yeah,” he whispered.
You grinned. Just like that. No hesitation or uncertainty. Just simply joy.
“Cool.”
Cool. As though the entire universe hadn’t shifted beneath his feet.
Like you hadn’t just become the answer to every question he’d ever asked late at night while tracing words on his wrist.
Your excitement was immediate and uncomplicated. Tim envied that.
Before he could think of what to say next, an adult voice called your name from further down the beach.
You waved in their direction.
“My dad’s over there!”
Tim glanced toward the striped worn out umbrella and the man watching the two of you with open curiosity.
You turned back to him. “Want to play?”
The answer should have been obvious. Still, Tim had never been asked that question with such easy sincerity before.
He nodded. “Okay.”
And somehow, that single word changed everything.
The two-year age gap disappeared within minutes.
You talked enough for both of you, filling every quiet moment with stories while Tim listened intently.
You showed him the smooth sea glass you’d collected.
He taught you how to tell the difference between oyster shells and clam shells.
You built sprawling sandcastles connected by winding trenches that the tide eventually claimed.
You chased waves until your shorts were soaked.
You buried his feet in the sand.
He let you.
When seagulls stole one of your crackers, you laughed so hard you nearly fell over.
Tim found himself laughing too. Really laughing. Not the polite smiles he wore at galas. Not the careful amusement he showed adults. Something warm and bright spilled through him every time you smiled at him. Like sunlight after weeks of rain.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t feel lonely.
It was strange. How someone he’d only known for a few hours could make the world feel different. Like he’d spent his entire life holding his breath without realising it. And now, sitting beside you in the sand while you proudly displayed a misshapen seashell you’d declared lucky, Tim finally exhaled.
This was what everyone talked about when they talked about soulmates. Not destiny. Not marks. Not magic. This.
The feeling that you’d found someone who fit beside you so naturally that being apart suddenly made no sense at all.
You looked up at him and smiled.
Tim smiled back.
Mine, he thought.
For the first time in his life, Tim knew exactly what he wanted.
And for the first time in his life, he believed he could have it.
→←↓↑
The sun began to sink lower in the sky far too quickly.
Tim noticed because your father stood from his chair and started packing away towels.
No. No, it couldn’t be that late already.
You were still explaining your very serious theory that seagulls were secretly spies.
“We have to go soon,” your dad called.
You looked up, your face immediately falling. “Aww.”
Something uncomfortable twisted in Tim’s chest.
“Can we stay a little longer?” you asked hopefully.
Your dad checked his watch and shook his head apologetically. “We still have to drive back.”
You sighed dramatically before turning back to Tim. “I guess I have to go.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Tim’s eyes dropped to your wrist.
Can I see that?
Then to his own.
That’s mine
Proof.
Even if you left, the words would stay. You couldn’t disappear completely. Soulmates always found each other. Everyone knew that. His mother had told him so.
You stood, brushing sand from your shorts. “Can we see each other again?”
“Yes,” Tim answered immediately. Too quickly. His cheeks warmed.
Your smile returned instantly. “Okay!”
Of course you would. You were soulmates. That was how this worked.
Tim stood too, suddenly aware that he didn’t know your last name. Or your phone number. Or where you lived.
Panic flickered briefly beneath his ribs. “We should-”
“Timothy.”
His mother waved from several yards away. “We need to get going soon.”
Not yet.
Please, not yet.
He looked back at you. Your father had already gathered your things.
Adults were always in a hurry.
The thought came suddenly and irrationally.
Adults ruined everything.
“Can I have your number?” Tim asked.
You blinked. “My what?”
Right. You were seven.
Your dad laughed as he walked over. “I don’t think they know our number by heart.”
Heat crawled up Tim’s neck. Of course you didn’t.
Think.
Addresses. Last names. Anything.
“Maybe we can write letters!” you suggested brightly.
Your father smiled. “That’s a good idea.”
Relief rushed through Tim so hard his knees felt weak.
Yes. Letters. Of course.
Your father knelt beside you. “Why don’t you get something to write on?”
You nodded enthusiastically and ran back toward the umbrella.
Tim turned to his parents, excitement bubbling in his chest so fiercely it almost hurt.
His mother was smiling.
His father looked amused.
“Soulmates, huh?” Jack asked softly.
Tim couldn’t stop smiling.
“Yeah.”
His mother squeezed his shoulder. “We’re happy for you, sweetheart.”
Everything felt right. Perfect. As if the universe had finally clicked into place.
You returned moments later with a purple marker and a wrinkled napkin.
Tim carefully wrote down his home address. Double-checked it twice, then handed you the marker.
You copied yours beneath it in large, uneven letters. Your handwriting tilted crookedly across the paper.
Tim thought it was the most important thing he’d ever held.
You tore the napkin in half.
One for you.
One for him.
Insurance.
Smart.
His soulmate was smart.
“I’ll write first,” you promised.
Tim folded the paper carefully and tucked it into the pocket of his shorts. “I’ll write back.”
You grinned.
“Deal.”
Then your father called your name again.
This time, you couldn’t delay. You waved at him. Then at Tim.
“Bye, Tim!”
His chest squeezed painfully. “Bye.”
You ran back toward your dad.
Halfway there, you turned around one last time and waved again.
Tim waved back immediately.
Only when you disappeared into the crowd did he lower his hand.
The beach suddenly felt quieter. Emptier. But it was okay. Because he had your address.
You’d write first. Then he’d write back. And this wouldn’t be goodbye.
Soulmates always found each other. Everyone knew that.
Tim pressed a hand over the pocket holding your half of the napkin.
The paper crackled softly beneath his palm. Safe.
Everything was going to be okay.
He had no way of knowing that by the time he sent his first letter, your family would already be gone.
No forwarding address. No phone number. Nothing.
Just two words inked onto his skin.
And the memory of a summer afternoon that would define the rest of his life.
The Batcave was quiet at three in the morning.
Not quite silent. Computers still hummed softly. Monitors cast blue light across polished metal surfaces. Somewhere overhead, water dripped steadily through ancient stone.
Most people would have called the hour late. Tim called it productive.
A half-empty coffee cup sat forgotten beside his keyboard.
Three different cases waited on adjacent screens.
An unsolved string of robberies. A League of Assassins weapons shipment. A missing persons report.
Tim ignored all of them.
Instead, he stared at a photograph taken twelve years ago.
The image quality was terrible. The edges were worn from use, the colors faded by time.
Two children sat cross-legged in the sand beside a lopsided castle.
A nine-year-old Tim grinned openly at the camera. The seven-year-old beside him was laughing.
Tim had memorised every pixel.
He knew exactly where the sunlight hit your face. Knew the shape of your smile. Knew the tiny crack running through the plastic bucket sitting between you.
The original photo lived in a fireproof safe upstairs.
This was one of the digital copies. One of hundreds.
His fingers drifted to his wrist.
That’s mine
The words had never faded.
Not after his mother’s death. Not after his father’s funeral. Not after becoming Robin. Not after being pushed into Red Robin. Not after years of searching.
They remained as dark and certain as the day he’d first heard them.
Proof that you existed. That you were still out there.
Tim had built entire investigations from less.
Over the years, he’d searched for you with a determination that bordered on insanity.
School records. Property databases. Archived census information. Social media. Facial recognition software. The Batcomputer.
Every new technology became another opportunity. Every dead end became another reason to keep looking.
He’d found international criminals more easily than he’d found you.
It shouldn’t have been possible.
But all he’d ever had was a nickname, a childhood address, and a photograph.
The apartment listed on the napkin had been empty by the time his first letter arrived.
Moved. No forwarding address.
The landlord hadn’t remembered where.
Your father’s phone number had been disconnected within the year.
After that, the trail vanished.
You vanished. Just like everyone else.
Tim pressed his thumb against the words on his wrist, digging in hard enough to sting. The area was crowded with thick, old scars, but the words were still clear. Even when things were at their worst, he’d never dared to slice through the letters.
Across the cave, laughter echoed from the stairs.
Dick. Jason. Damian.
Family.
People who stayed. Mostly.
Tim minimised the photo before any of them could walk over and see.
He’d made rhe mistake once.
Dick had found him at sixteen, sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor surrounded by maps and newspaper clippings.
“What’re you working on?”
Tim had frozen for a second too long and Dick had seen the picture. Seen the soulmate mark. The pure desperation.
Tim still remembered the concern in his brother’s voice. “You know they’ll come back into your life eventually, right?”
Tim hadn’t answered. Because that wasn’t what scared him. Finding you had never been the problem. Losing you again was.
And what if, after all these years, you met Dick first? Dick, with his effortless charm and easy smiles.
What if you met Jason? Jason, who filled every room he walked into.
What if you met Damian? Brilliant. Confident. Unapologetically himself.
Fuck.
Tim rubbed a hand over his face. The thoughts were irrational. He knew that.
You were soulmates. His soulmate.
His.
The universe had written your first words onto his skin before either of you were born.
Still, the fear remained. Because soulmates weren’t guarantees.
He’d seen enough failed bonds to know that. People walked away from soulmates all the time. People chose other people. People left.
The words on his wrist proved destiny.
They didn’t prove love.
His computer chimed softly. A notification. Another failed search parameter.
Tim closed it without reading.
He’d check again tomorrow. Run new algorithms. Cross-reference new databases. Keep looking.
He always kept looking.
Because somewhere out there, you still carried four words on your wrist.
Words he’d spoken before he knew how much they would matter.
Words that had become the center of his entire life.
Can I see that?
You probably traced them absentmindedly while waiting in line for coffee. Probably laughed when people asked about them. Maybe you told the beach story sometimes. Maybe you didn’t remember it at all.
The thought hollowed him out.
He remembered everything.
The sound of your laugh. The way you buried his feet in the sand. The gap between your front teeth. The way you’d turned around to wave at him one last time.
He remembered because he’d never stopped needing to.
Because forgetting had never even been an option.
Tim opened the pic again. Zoomed in, just a little. As if getting closer to the screen could somehow bridge twelve years.
“I’ll find you,” he whispered into the empty cave.
The promise was soft. Certain. The same way those words had always been.
He’d spent more than half his life searching. And Tim Drake was not someone prone to giving up.
University wasn’t anything like you’d expected.
Everyone had promised it would be the best years of your life.
Mostly, it was just busy.
Assignments piled up faster than you could finish them. Your sleep schedule was held together by caffeine and wishful thinking. Half your meals came from the campus café because grocery shopping required a level of organisation you simply didn’t possess.
Still, you liked it. You liked the freedom. The independence. The way nobody cared if you wore the same hoodie three days in a row.
Your world had become pleasantly ordinary.
Evening lectures. Study groups. Late-night takeout with friends. Dinner with your dad every Sunday evening.
Life moved forward in small, comfortable routines.
Soulmates fit somewhere inside that routine. Not at the centre of it. Just… there. A fact of life. An eventuality.
You’d never been one of those people who obsessed over their soulmate mark.
Maybe it was because your bond wasn’t particularly unusual. Words were rare, sure, but not unheard of.
Or maybe it was because the words themselves didn’t tell you much.
Can I see that?
People asked about them all the time. Friends in high school had theories.
Maybe your soulmate worked in museums. Maybe they were an artist. Maybe they were just really nosy.
You usually laughed and changed the subject. Because the truth was, you didn’t know.
You’d heard the words once. Apparently.
You remembered flashes of a beach. A boy. Older than you, maybe.
The memory shifted every time you tried to hold onto it.
Childhood was like that.
Important moments blurred around the edges until you weren’t sure whether you truly remembered them or had simply heard the story too many times.
Your dad remembered more than you did.
Every few years, he’d bring it up with a fond smile.
“Remember when you met your soulmate at the beach?”
You always laughed. “Not really.”
His expression turned wistful every time. “You were inseparable all day.”
You believed him. You just couldn’t remember. Not properly. There were no photos. No letters. No evidence beyond four words inked onto your skin.
Sometimes you wondered if your soulmate remembered. Or if they’d forgotten too.
The thought never upset you.
Life was busy. If they were meant to come back into your life, they would.
You traced the words on your wrist absentmindedly as you sat outside the library, waiting for your next class to start.
Can I see that?
Around you, campus buzzed with life. Students hurried between lectures. Someone laughed nearby. A group passed carrying redbulls and complaining about an upcoming exam.
Your phone buzzed. A message from your dad.
Don’t forget dinner this weekend.
You smiled despite yourself.
I’m nineteen. I won’t forget the dinner we plan every week.
The typing bubble appeared instantly.
You’ll still be my kid when you’re ninety.
Shaking your head, you slipped your phone back into your pocket.
You had a lecture in ten minutes. An essay due next week. Plans with friends on Friday. A whole life unfolding in front of you.
You stood and adjusted your bag over your shoulder.
Completely unaware that, less than twenty miles away, someone was running your photograph through facial recognition software.
Unaware that someone had spent the last twelve years searching for you.
That somewhere beneath Gotham, a man who knew the exact shape of your childhood smile was whispering your name to himself like a prayer.
To you, your soulmate was a pleasant mystery.
To Tim Drake, you had become an obsession.
←↓↑→
The Batcomputer chimed again. A different sound this time.
A match.
Tim froze.
The notification sat in the corner of the screen for almost three full seconds before he trusted himself enough to breathe.
Possible facial recognition match found.
Similarity: 91.3%
His chair scraped violently across the cave floor. “No…” The word barely made it out.
His fingers were already moving. Open. Enhance. Cross-reference.
The photo filled the monitor.
Not the child from the beach. An adult. Older. Nineteen.
Your jaw had sharpened. Your hair was different. You’d grown into your features the way children always did.
But your smile..
His heart stopped. It was you. It had to be. The same eyes. The same crooked little smile he’d memorised from a photograph so faded he’d reconstructed parts of it by hand.
He didn’t realise he was crying until a tear landed on the keyboard.
“I found you…” The words cracked apart in his throat.
Twelve years of dead ends. Of wondering if he’d imagined that day on the beach.
And here you were. Real.
Tim laughed. It sounded dangerously close to a sob. “You’re okay.”
His hands shook so violently he mistyped twice trying to open the source.
A public Instagram account. Must’ve been someone else’s, since you’d been tagged.
A university friend, judging from the captions.
He clicked.
More photos. You outside a café. You in the library. You wearing an oversized hoodie while holding a coffee nearly as big as your head.
You’d always hated crusts. You pushed your sleeves over your hands. You still smiled with your whole face. Every tiny detail hit him like another heartbeat.
He couldn’t stop looking. Couldn’t stop smiling.
“I found you.”
You looked… Happy.
His chest hurt.
You’d grown up. Without him. Without a single letter. Without remembering him.
Guilt settled somewhere deep inside his ribs.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner.
I’m here now.
I’ll never lose you again.
He clicked the next post. His smile disappeared. You stood beside someone about your age. Their arms wrapped around your shoulders. They leaned over to kiss your cheek.
You were making the most exaggerated expression of disgust imaginable, nose scrunched, lips pulled away dramatically while the caption underneath read:
Admit it, you love me ♡
Anyone else would’ve laughed.
Tim knew it wasn’t romantic. He could see that. He understood body language. Read micro-expressions. Built psychological profiles from less. They were friends.
Just friends.
But then why were they touching you?
His breathing slowed. The cave suddenly felt much colder.
Their hand rested so naturally against your shoulder. Like they’d done it before.
They’d probably hugged you. Sat beside you. Heard you laugh. Been there while you were becoming.. you.
They’d lived twelve years Tim had been denied. Twelve years that should have been his.
Jealousy wasn’t the right word. It felt uglier than that. Hungrier.
Tim rested his forehead against his clasped hands. “That’s selfish.” His voice came out hoarse.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Of course you hadn’t. You deserved friends. You deserved people who loved you. People who looked after you. You deserved everything. He should be grateful someone had been there while he hadn’t.
He should.
…
But why did it feel like something inside him was being torn apart?
Why couldn’t he stop staring at the place their lips touched your cheek?
Why did he want to beat-
No.
Tim squeezed his eyes shut hard enough to hurt.
Don’t think that. They’re important to you. If they’re important to you…
Then they’re important to me.
The words sounded rehearsed. Like he was trying to convince himself.
Another notification blinked in the corner of the monitor.
“Replacement patrol assigned.”
Followed almost immediately by another from Bruce.
Where are you?
Tim didn’t even look. His eyes never left your face.
“I found you.” This time, the whisper wasn’t joyful. It was reverent. Almost prayerful.
“Please..”
His thumb brushed lightly across your smiling face on the screen.
“Please still want me.”
Months passed before he let himself stand within twenty metres of you.
Not because he lacked the opportunity. He just couldn’t risk ruining it.
You deserved a proper reunion. He’d rehearsed it hundreds of times.
“Hi.”
Too casual.
“You probably don’t remember me…”
Too pathetic.
“We met once, years ago.”
Too unbelievable.
So he waited. And watched.
He learnt your timetable before he ever learnt the sound of your adult voice.
Tuesday lectures started at one thirty. You always arrived a few minutes early.
You bought the same coffee every Wednesday, except during exam weeks, when you switched to doubles without even realising you were doing it.
You texted your friends while waiting for pedestrian crossings.
You hummed when you cooked.
You don’t lock your front window.
Tim fixed that after you went to sleep.
The first time he’d climbed through your garden to latch it from the inside, he’d almost laughed at himself.
This is insane. He knew that. He also knew the suburb’s burglary statistics.
The window stayed locked after that.
You never noticed.
Good.
You weren’t supposed to.
He never took anything. That would’ve made it real.
Instead he’d straighten the photo frame you’d knocked crooked. Move your forgotten wallet a little further from the edge of the kitchen bench. Replace the batteries in your smoke alarm after it chirped once at three in the morning.
Tiny enough things that you might’ve assumed you’d done yourself.
He wasn’t trying to change your life.
He was only… smoothing the edges. Helping. Protecting.
The files on the Batcomputer grew thicker.
Medical history. University records. Favourite takeaway. Allergies. Blood type. Emergency contacts. Your friends.
Every single one received their own folder.
It’s not like Tim distrusted them. It’s just that if one of them ever needed help getting to you, he wanted to know before they did.
He read their social media. Their public records. Their routines. Who they dated. Whether they drank too much. Whether they drove distracted. Whether they’d ever hurt anyone. If they were kind to you.
Tim found himself quietly grateful.
If they made you cry, he’d spend the rest of the night staring at their name.
His fingers hovering over keyboards. Databases. Background checks. One command. He could dismantle someone’s entire life before sunrise.
He never pressed Enter.
Because that wasn’t what you would’ve wanted. And your happiness mattered more than his anger. It always would.
←↓↑→
Bruce noticed first.
“You’ve stopped sleeping.”
“I’m busy.”
“You haven’t been running facial recognition software anymkre.”
Silence.
Bruce sighed. “You found them.”
Tim didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Bruce’s expression softened for only a second. “I’m glad they’re alive.”
“So am I.”
Another silence.
“You haven’t spoken to them.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Tim looked back towards the glowing monitor. Your face smiled back from a candid photo one of your friends had uploaded that afternoon.
What if you looked at him and didn’t remember? What if twelve years had turned him into a stranger?
He could survive broken bones. Gunshots. The Joker. He wasn’t sure he could survive watching confusion replace your smile.
So instead, he watched from afar. Close enough to stop anything bad from reaching you. Far enough that you never had to know there had been danger at all.
If someone followed you home, they found another route. If your tire went flat, roadside assistance somehow arrived before you’d even finished pulling over. If your wallet went missing, it appeared at the nearest police station before you’d cancelled your cards.
Tim preferred it that way. Because heroes weren’t supposed to ask for thanks.
And if protecting you was the only place he still belonged, then that was enough.
It had to be.
Because wanting anything more felt unforgivably selfish.
Some nights, though, when he watched your bedroom light switch off, he’d rest two fingers against the computer screen.
“I miss you.” A tiny, tired smile.
“You don’t even know me.” His voice cracked. “But I know you.”
He swallowed hard. “And that’s enough. It has to be.”
You’d always considered yourself a pretty lucky person.
Not lottery-winning lucky. More ‘weird little coincidences’ lucky.
Like the time your car decided to die halfway home after a late shift.
You’d barely managed to pull onto the shoulder before an RACQ van rolled around the corner.
The bloke had laughed.
“Perfect timing.”
You’d laughed too. “What are the odds?”
Or when you’d realised you’d left your wallet at the café.
You’d panicked for all of thirty seconds before the staff smiled and held it up.
“Someone dropped it into us.”
No cash missing. Cards untouched. You’d gone home convinced there were still decent people in the world.
Then there was the time your smoke alarm had stopped making that awful chirping noise before you’d gotten around to buying batteries.
You assumed you’d imagined hearing it.
Then the dodgy latch on your bedroom window had somehow started working again.
Finally.
About bloody time.
You made a mental note to thank your landlord.
You forgot.
Life just happened like that. Little inconveniences solving themselves. Disasters never fully becoming disasters.
You figured everyone had stories like yours.
Didn’t they?
→↓←↑
“You are,” Your friend declared, pointing a chip at you across the table, “the universe’s favourite.”
“Oh, piss off.”
“I’m serious.”
“You spilled an entire iced latte over your assignment yesterday.”
He crossed his arms, dropping the chip into his mouth. “And then the professor gave us a forty-eight hour extension.”
“That was for everyone.”
“Exactly.” He grinned.
“You just benefit the most.”
You rolled your eyes. “I think you’re confusing luck with chronic incompetence.”
“I think,” he replied, “you’ve got some weird guardian angel following you around.”
You snorted so hard your drink nearly came out your nose.
“Imagine.”
“Oi, don’t laugh. Nan swears everyone gets one.”
“If mine exists, they’re exhausted.”
“They’re probably on stress leave.”
You both laughed until people started looking over.
Sometimes, though, there were moments.
You’d catch yourself glancing over your shoulder after leaving uni.
It always felt like someone had said your name. But there was never anyone there.
Just people walking. Cars passing. The breeze.
You’d shake it off.
Your friends called you observant.
You noticed when someone changed shampoo. When lecturers looked more tired than usual. When strangers were having bad days.
But somehow, you’d never notice the black motorbike parked half a block away. Never notice that it wasn’t always the same bike. That the familiar silhouette perched on rooftops when you walked home after evening classes. Or the pair of blue eyes lifting from a rooftop scope the second you glanced upwards. Because every time your gaze drifted a little too close, he was already gone.
Because why would you? No one expects to be the centre of somebody else’s universe.
Not without knowing it.
Somewhere in Gotham, Tim closed another file. Today’s entry was short.
Ate lunch.
Laughed with friends.
Nearly got hit by a cyclist while reading a text.
Smiled twenty-three times.
His lips curved despite himself. “Good.”
He closed the document. Another day where nothing bad had happened to you. Another perfect day.
Exactly as it should be.
Tim wasn’t looking for anything in particular. He never was anymore. Watching you had become as habitual as checking the weather before patrol or reviewing overnight reports from the Titans.
One monitor displayed Wayne Enterprises’ quarterly projections while another quietly cycled through public posts from accounts you’d been tagged in over the past twenty-four hours.
One of your friend’s account refreshed.
A new post. Six photos.
The first was all of you crowded around a tiny restaurant table littered with empty plates and cocktail glasses, your smile wide enough to crinkle your eyes.
The second was a blurry group selfie that looked like it’d been taken after far too many attempts.
The third showed someone holding up printed boarding passes.
The fourth made his stomach tighten.
It was you, sitting cross-legged on somebody’s lounge room floor with travel brochures scattered around your knees. You were laughing so hard your head had tipped backwards, completely unaware of the camera.
The caption was simple.
Can’t believe we’re finally doing it. Goodbye Gotham. Next stop: Europe!! ✈️
The comments underneath were worse.
You’re actually leaving us.
Don’t forget us when you’re famous overseas.
Still can’t believe you’re moving.
Going to miss you so much.
Tim reread that last one. Then the one before it. Then the caption again.
His cursor hovered over the screen.
“…Moving?” The word sounded foreign in his own voice.
He opened your calendar. Nothing.
Your university timetable. Nothing.
Your employment records. Nothing.
He searched airline databases. Nothing.
He frowned. That didn’t make sense.
If you were emigrating, there would’ve been paperwork. Visa applications. Employment sponsorship. Rental listings. Passport activity beyond an ordinary holiday.
Unless you’d only decided recently. If you’d kept it private. If he’d missed something.
Tim’s fingers were already moving before he’d consciously decided to investigate.
Searches multiplied across the Batcomputer. Passport usage. Banking activity. University enrolment. Rental history. Government databases. Public records. Flight manifests.
The cave filled with the quiet clatter of keys.
Hours passed unnoticed. Eventually, one search returned a result.
Three return tickets. Departure in eleven days. Return scheduled just over three weeks later.
Tim stared at the itinerary for a long moment. Three weeks. Not forever. Just three weeks.
His shoulders sagged so abruptly it almost hurt.
He laughed once under his breath, embarrassed by the sheer force of the relief flooding through him. “You idiot…”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “They’re coming back.”
Of course you were.
He’d panicked over a holiday.
His heartbeat gradually settled.
He closed the flight information. Then his eyes drifted back to the Instagram post.
Goodbye Gotham.
Going to miss you.
Still can’t believe you’re moving.
They’d all thought it looked permanent too.
He wasn’t stupid. The wording was misleading. Anyone could’ve misunderstood.
But the thought of you leaving for twenty-one days was unfathomable. You’d be where every system he’d quietly built around your safety became useless.
Where there only needed to be one delayed ambulance, drunk driver, pickpocket in the wrong place, one stupid accident.. and he would be exactly where he’d been twelve years ago.
Too late.
His fingers folded together beneath his chin.
He remembered another disappearance. Another day he’d told himself he’d find you tomorrow.
Tomorrow had become twelve years.
He’d promised himself that would never happen again.
Slowly, almost absent-mindedly, he reopened your file. Thousands of pages. Medical records. Class schedules. Emergency contacts. Favourite cafés. The names of everyone you’d ever trusted. Months of observation. Years of restraint.
He looked at the date stamped across the oldest folder. All this time waiting, for what?
Permission?
A perfect reunion?
Some magical moment where you’d look at him and everything would make sense?
What a ridiculous fantasy.
You didn’t remember him. You never would. Not unless he made you.
He had mistaken absence for kindness. Distance for love.
He’d stood outside your life for months, convincing himself that watching you from the shadows was enough because it made you smile.
And where had that left him?
Watching another goodbye. Waiting for another disappearance. Still pretending he could survive it.
A quiet laugh escaped him. Ashamed. “I’ve been an idiot.” The words echoed through the empty cave.
He’d treated his own devotion like something shameful. Something to hide. As though loving you enough to dedicate every waking moment to your safety was a flaw instead of the truest thing he’d ever felt.
No one else loved you like this. No one else could.
Your friends loved the version of you they saw between lectures and dinners. Your family loved the child you’d once been. Tim loved every version.
The child on the beach. The teenager he’d reconstructed from scattered photographs. The adult who forgot to lock windows, who hummed while cooking, who laughed with your whole body when something was funny.
He loved the life you’d built without him. And perhaps that had been his mistake.
He’d mistaken love for spectatorship.
Love wasn’t standing fifty metres away making sure you got home safely. It wasn’t fixing broken latches in the middle of the night and leaving before sunrise. It wasn’t pretending he didn’t exist.
Love was being there.
His gaze drifted back to your smiling face.
“You’ve waited long enough,” he murmured.
For a moment, it almost sounded as though he was speaking to you. Then he smiled.
“No more.” The words weren’t a promise to himself. They were a decision.
He reached for his phone. For the first time in months, he wasn’t planning how to keep watching you.
He was planning how to finally walk into your life.
And this time, he wasn’t ever going to leave.
↑←→↓
The house had taken longer than he would’ve liked to build. Because nothing ever felt good enough.
Tim replaced every piece of furniture twice before he was satisfied. The mattress in the spare bedroom became a king-sized one after he remembered you tended to sleep diagonally whenever you had nowhere important to be the next morning. The kitchen cupboards were stocked with your favourite brands, each item selected with the quiet certainty of someone who had spent years memorising details you never realised you were giving away.
The coffee in the pantry was the same blend you bought every Wednesday.
The toothpaste in the bathroom was the brand you preferred.
The shampoo smelled exactly like the one you'd used six months ago before switching to something else.
You'd liked the old one better.
You just hadn't known it.
Fresh towels sat folded neatly on the shelves. Spare chargers waited beside every bed. Books you had once picked up in stores and put back down rested untouched on shelves already prepared for you.
Every room carried traces of you.
The wardrobe had been the hardest part.
Not expensive things. Not things he wanted. Things you would have chosen.
A ridiculous pair of fluffy socks shaped like little sharks that you’d laughed at for almost five minutes in a department store before deciding they were “too expensive for socks”.
Tim had bought them the following afternoon.
There were plants in nearly every room because you’d once spent fifteen minutes helping a stranger rescue a dying fern from the clearance section at Bunnings.
Healthy, thriving ones.
Nothing in this house would be allowed to die. Not if he could help it.
Music speakers sat discreetly throughout the house.
A shelf waited half-finished in the study because you’d once mentioned you wished you knew how to build furniture yourself.
Tim had watched hours of woodworking tutorials that night.
Just in case you ever wanted to learn.
The entire house was filled with preparations for conversations that had never happened.
Future memories assembled in advance.
A life rehearsed over and over by a man who had spent too long alone.
The only parts that didn’t belong were the things that had never been negotiable.
The cameras. One in every room. Carefully hidden. The reinforced glass. The electronic locks. The steel shutters concealed inside the walls. The security system that could seal the entire house down in seconds.
The absence of anything sharp enough to become a weapon.
Tim stood in the middle of the lounge room long after everything was finished.
His gaze drifted slowly across the room.
The couch where you'd sit. The blanket folded over the armrest. The coffee mug already waiting in the cupboard. The spot beside him.
He turned slowly, searching for flaws.
His eyes landed on one of the cameras. A small black lens hidden in the corner.
His expression crumpled. "...I'm sorry." The apology came out quietly. Almost embarrassed.
"I know you'll hate these."
He stared at it for a long moment. As if he could already see the disappointment on your face. The fear. Anger. Betrayal.
His throat tightened.
"I know." His voice cracked slightly.
"I know you will."
His gaze dropped toward the front door.
Toward the locks. The barriers. The things that would keep you inside. The things that would keep you from leaving him.
His hand pressed against the wood.
"And those." The words barely escaped him.
"You'll think I'm a monster."
A small laugh escaped him. Broken and humourless.
The painful part was knowing that you'd be right.
His eyes burned. "You won't understand."
The house blurred slightly.
"You'll think this is about control."
His fingers tightened against the door. "It's not."
The lie sounded weak even to him. Because it was about control. Partly. But mostly it was about terror. The unbearable, suffocating terror of losing something he had never truly possessed.
"I just..." The words stopped. His throat worked.
He looked around the house again. At the rooms prepared for you. The meals he imagined cooking. The books waiting on shelves. The life built entirely around your absence. And suddenly the entire thing felt pathetic.
A shrine pretending to be a home. A love story with only one participant.
Tim swallowed hard.
"I tried doing it the right way." Years of restraint condensed into one broken sentence.
"I really did." His voice was barely audible.
"I waited."
For you to notice. For you to choose him. For one day to become the day. For years. Nothing.
His eyes closed. And for the first time since finishing the house, he looked genuinely miserable.
None of this felt like winning. It felt like surrender. The last desperate act of someone who had run out of ways to be patient.
His hand remained on the lock. As though he hated it. As though he needed it.
"I'll take them away."
The promise came quickly. Desperately. Like he needed you to hear it.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
Not anytime soon.
But someday.
If you stayed.
If you smiled at him.
If you stopped looking at him like he was something frightening.
"If you trust me."
Airport security had never made you nervous before.
Annoyed, sure.
You’d complained about taking your shoes off often enough, rolled your eyes at the queue crawling forward centimetre by centimetre, and wondered more than once why your bag was always the one selected for a random inspection.
But nervous?
Not until a woman in a navy security uniform approached with an apologetic smile. “Excuse me?”
You looked up from your phone.
“Would you mind coming with me for a moment?”
Your stomach dropped. “..Sorry?”
“There are a couple of questions regarding your luggage.”
“My luggage?”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
Your friends exchanged confused looks.
“What happened?” one of them asked.
The woman simply smiled again. “It shouldn’t take long.”
That wasn’t exactly reassuring.
You followed anyway, trying to ignore the dozen increasingly ridiculous possibilities running through your head.
Had someone packed something into your suitcase?
The further you walked from the terminal, the quieter everything became. The constant announcements faded. The crowds disappeared.
Eventually, the woman stopped outside an unmarked door and opened it.
“Someone will be with you shortly.”
You stepped inside. The room looked more like an executive meeting room than airport security.
Dark timber. Leather chairs. A wall of monitors. A coffee machine in the corner.
And someone already waiting.
He stood the moment you entered.
For a second, your brain failed to process what you were looking at.
People that attractive belonged in advertisements. On giant billboards. In impossibly expensive campaigns designed by teams of professionals whose entire careers revolved around manufacturing beauty.
Not standing ten feet away. Not breathing. Not real.
He was tall enough to seem imposing without trying, dressed in a charcoal suit that looked less worn than sculpted onto him. The cut was perfect. Every line sharp. Every detail precise.
Yet somehow it wasn't the suit that drew your attention.
It was him.
Dark hair, slightly too long, falling across his forehead in a way that should have looked careless but somehow only made him more devastating to look at. It softened features that would otherwise have been almost unfairly severe.
His face looked like something an artist would've spent months trying to get right.
Strong jaw.
Straight nose.
Cheekbones sharp enough to catch the light.
Everything balanced so perfectly it bordered on irritating.
But it was his eyes that made it impossible to look away.
Blue.
Not the bright artificial blue magazines edited into existence.
Something deeper. Cooler. The colour of the sky just before a storm.
The kind of eyes people wrote poetry about when they ran out of better ideas.
And they were looking directly at you.
As though the moment you entered the room, everything else had ceased to matter.
Your pulse skipped.
This was ridiculous. You weren't sixteen. You weren't the type to lose your ability to function because an attractive man happened to exist in your vicinity.
And yet, there was something profoundly unfair about the way he carried himself.
The quiet confidence. The effortless posture. The controlled stillness that made every movement feel deliberate.
Even standing up from a chair somehow looked elegant. Like he'd spent his entire life accidentally making everyone else look clumsy by comparison.
Then your brain finally caught up. Recognition hit like a delayed collision.
You knew that face. Everyone knew that face.
Interviews. Magazine covers. Business journals. Wayne Enterprises.
"...Tim Drake?"
Something happened to his expression after you’d said it. A subtle shift.
The carefully composed businessman vanished for half a second.
Enough to reveal something underneath. Something startlingly human.
Relief.
His shoulders loosened almost imperceptibly. His gaze softened. And suddenly he looked less like the impossibly wealthy CEO you'd seen in magazines and more like a man who had been holding his breath for a very long time.
"Hi." His tone was lower than you expected. Warm. Gentle. The sort of voice that made people instinctively lean closer.
You found yourself staring again.
The newsletters had lied.
They captured the symmetry. The beauty. The impossible genetics. But they missed everything else.
The intelligence behind his eyes. The exhaustion buried beneath them. The strange sadness lingering at the edges of his smile. The tiny imperfections that somehow made him even worse. A faint crease near one cuff where he'd clearly adjusted his sleeve too many times. A loosened breath. The tension hidden beneath composure. Nervousness.
The realisation struck you so abruptly you almost laughed. Tim Drake looked nervous.
Which made absolutely no sense.
Men like Tim Drake weren't supposed to get nervous. Especially not around strangers. Yet there it was. Written in the subtle tightening of his jaw. The way his hands remained carefully still. The fractionally too-long pause before speaking.
As though meeting you mattered far more than it should. Far more than it possibly could.
Recognition fluttered strangely in your chest. An inexplicable feeling that you knew him.
That if you crossed the room and took his hand, it would fit.
You frowned at yourself.
What the hell was that?
“I’m sorry,” you laughed awkwardly. “This is probably a stupid question, but…”
Your eyes met his. For the briefest second, the entire room felt impossibly still.
“Have we met before?”
His breath caught.
As though the question alone had knocked the air from his lungs.
A thousand emotions crossed his face too quickly to name.
Hope. Relief. Grief. Love so overwhelming it almost looked painful.
Then he smiled. Small and beautiful. Heartbreakingly fragile.
“No.”
The answer came after a beat too long. “Not in a way you’d remember.”
You opened your mouth.
Before you could ask what that meant, a sharp, chemical smell drifted through the room.
Your head suddenly felt heavy.
You blinked hard.
The floor shifted beneath your feet.
“..What…”
Your knees threatened to give way. Strong hands caught you before you hit the ground.
Instinctively, you tried to pull away. You couldn’t. Your limbs refused to cooperate.
Panic surged through you.
“Hey-” Your voice came out slurred. “What.. did…”
The room blurred. You forced yourself to look up one last time.
Tim was already kneeling in front of you, one arm supporting your weight with impossible care, the other brushing your hair back from your face as though you were something precious enough to break.
The look on his face wasn’t triumphant nor cruel. It was devastated.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and his voice shook so badly it barely sounded like speech.
“I tried.”
His forehead rested against yours for the briefest moment. “I waited as long as I could.”
The last thing you saw before darkness swallowed everything was Tim Drake looking at you like a man who had finally reached heaven,
and hated himself for the path he’d taken to get there.
↑→↓←
The silence in the bedroom was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic, shallow sound of your breathing.
Tim sat on the edge of the mattress, his weight barely making a dent in the expensive linens.
His suit jacket discarded on the floor, his shirt unbuttoned halfway to reveal the tension in his chest. It was damp with sweat, clinging to the lean muscles of his back as he leaned into your space.
He looked wrecked. His hair was a mess, his eyes were bloodshot, and there was a frantic, starving look in them that made the air in the room feel thick. He looked like a man who had finally been allowed to touch the altar after years of kneeling in the dark.
He watched you. Not looking away even to blink.
His hand reached out, his fingers trembling as they made contact with your skin.
He started at your ankle, his touch light, almost hesitant, as if he expected you to bolt upright and scream the moment he touched you.
He traced the line of your leg, his thumb brushing over the softness of your calf, moving upward with a slow, agonising patience.
He wasn't just touching you; he was memorising you. He was verifying that you were solid, that you were warm, and that you were finally, truly, here.
When his hand reached your hip, his touch grew a little more firm. He slid his palm under the hem of your shirt, the heat of your skin seeping into his calloused fingertips.
He let his hand wander, trailing over the curve of your waist and the soft swell of your stomach. He moved with a desperate kind of reverence, his eyes fixed on where his hand met your flesh.
He leaned forward, his movements slow and deliberate, until he was hovering just above you.
He buried his face into the crook of your stomach, pressing his nose against the warmth of your skin. He took a long, shuddering breath, inhaling the scent of you. The soap you’d bought, the skin he’d dreamt of, the reality of you.
He stayed there for a long time, his forehead pressed against your abdomen, his breath warm against your skin.
He sounded broken, a low, jagged exhale escaping him every time he breathed you in. He gripped the fabric of your clothes, his knuckles turning white, as if he were terrified that if he let go, the entire room would dissolve and leave him standing in an empty house again.
He wasn't being careful anymore. He was greedy.
He let his hands wander upward, his thumbs tracing the line of your ribs, his touch heavy and insistent.
He watched the way your chest rose and fell, his eyes tracking the movement of your muscles with a terrifying, hungry focus. He was memorising the architecture of you.
Then, he lowered himself.
He didn't just lean in, he collapsed against you. He buried his face in the heat of your skin, his nose pressing hard into your chest, inhaling you with a sound that was half sob, half growl.
His mouth followed the path of his hands. He pressed hot, wet kisses along your side, his lips dragging over your skin with a desperate, uncoordinated hunger.
He moved lower, his face pressing into the dip of your waist, his breath hitching as he felt the warmth of you.
He was acting like a man possessed, his movements frantic yet strangely worshipful.
He shifted, his heavy thigh sliding between yours, forcing your legs apart to make room for him.
He was pressing himself against you, the hard, insistent length of him straining against the fabric of his trousers.
He reached down, his hand sliding lower, his fingers hooking into the waistband of your underwear.
He didn't hesitate. He slid his hand inside, his fingers seeking the heat of you. He wasn't being clinical, he was searching, his touch clumsy and urgent, his fingers trembling as they found you.
He let out a low, broken sound. A whimper when he finally made contact, the sound entirely too small for a boy of his stature.
He leaned up just enough to look at your face, his eyes dark and blown wide with a terrifying kind of devotion.
He looked pathetic.
Shaking, sweating, and completely at the mercy of someone who wasn't even awake to see him.
"You're so perfect," he whispered, his voice cracking. "It's not fair. It's not fucking fair."
He leaned back down, his mouth finding the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, his tongue tracing a wet, hot line that made his own body shudder. He was worshiping you, and he was doing it with the desperate, starving energy of a boy who knew he didn't deserve a single second of it.
He pulled back just an inch, his lips hovering a fraction above your skin. The heat from his mouth a stark contrast to the cool air of the room, but he was trembling with the effort of not sinking teeth into you.
He looked up at your face, his eyes searching yours even though he knew they were closed.
"I should stop," he whispered, the words tasting bitter on his tongue. "I should wait until you wake up. Until you can actually look at me."
But his hand didn't listen. His fingers were still buried deep in the waistband of your underwear, his thumb sweeping against your heat with a slow, rhythmic pressure that was meant to be soothing but felt entirely too hungry.
He watched your face, waiting for a frown or a groan, his heart hammering against his ribs so hard it felt like it might bruise.
He wanted to worship you properly, but he has also waited so long that he was practically starving to death.
With a shaky, defeated breath, he leaned down again, but he didn't go for your core this time.
Instead, he pressed his cheek against your thigh, his eyes closing as he let himself simply be near you.
He moved his hand in a steady, agonisingly slow motion, a gentle friction that was almost a tease. He wasn't trying to make you finish. He was just trying to feel the life in you, the pulse of your blood beneath his palm.
"I'll be good," he promised, his voice a wrecked, low murmur against your skin. "I'll be so good for you. Just.. let me stay like this for a little longer."
He let his hips grind weakly against yours, a desperate, uncoordinated movement that was more about seeking comfort than seeking pleasure.
He reached up with his free hand, his fingers tangling in your hair, pulling your head slightly toward him as if he could coax you into waking up just to tell him he was doing a good job.
He pressed a final, lingering kiss to the inside of your knee, his lips trembling.
"When you wake up," he breathed, his forehead resting against your hip, "everything will be different. I promise. I'll give you everything. Just.. don't leave me again."
↓→←↑
Consciousness returned in fragments.
The first thing you noticed was the weight on your mind. Everything felt slow, wrapped in thick cotton, every thought taking just a little too long to surface. Your eyelids were heavy enough that opening them felt like lifting something far larger than yourself.
The second thing you noticed was the silence.
No traffic. No voices outside. No distant hum of aeroplanes climbing into the sky. Just… Quiet.
Your eyes cracked open.
The ceiling above you wasn’t familiar.
Cream plaster. Dark timber beams. Soft morning light spilling through linen curtains that shifted lazily with the breeze.
For one impossible second, you wondered if you’d somehow slept through your holiday.
Then memories crashed back all at once.
Airport. Security. The room. Tim Drake.
Your body jerked upright. The room spun so violently you almost fell straight back onto the mattress.
A hand caught your shoulder before you could.
“Easy.”
You recoiled instinctively.
Tim immediately let go.
He stepped backwards so quickly it was almost clumsy, both hands lifting into the air like he was surrendering.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse.
“I just… you nearly hit your head.”
You stared. He looked different. Gone was the immaculate businessman from the airport.
He’d changed into a plain black jumper and loose track pants, sleeves shoved carelessly to his elbows. His hair looked like he’d run his hands through it a hundred times. Dark circles sat beneath eyes that hadn’t slept.
He looked exhausted. But he also looked terrified. Not of what he’d done.
Of you.
As though the expression on your face mattered more than the fact he’d just kidnapped someone.
“…Where am I?”
“My home.” The answer came quietly.
“Our home.” He sighed, taking his hand through his hair. “I should have said that. I meant our. Sorry.”
Your stomach twisted. “What?”
“I bought it years ago.”
He glanced around the room almost shyly. “I.. thought you’d like it.”
Silence settled between you. Then he laughed. Not because anything was funny. He sounded like he was about to cry.
“I know how insane that sounds.”
Your breathing quickened. “You kidnapped me.”
“Yes.”
“You drugged me.”
“…Yes.”
“My friends-”
“They’re safe.” The response came instantly.
“They think you missed your flight and decided to stay behind. They’ll worry for a while, but they’ll stop. I’ll make sure they’re alright.”
You stared at him. He wasn’t denying any of it. He wasn’t making excuses. Wasn’t pretending this was for your own good.
He simply stood there looking unbearably guilty.
“I know what this is.” His voice cracked. “I know what I am.”
His eyes dropped to the floor.
“I stopped trying to convince myself I wouldn’t do this a long time ago.”
He laughed again, quieter this time. “I just kept hoping I’d be stronger before it came to this.”
You looked towards the bedroom door. It wasn’t locked. You were almost certain of that.
He noticed.
“You can try.” His smile was small. Heartbreaking.
“I’ll stop you.”
The words weren’t threatening. They were apologetic.
“I’ll hate myself for it.”
Another shaky breath. “But I’ll still stop you.” His shoulders sagged. “I can’t lose you.”
You looked back at him. For the first time since waking, you really looked. His hands were shaking. His breathing wasn’t steady. His eyes were fixed on you with such desperate concentration it was almost painful to witness.
Then your gaze caught on his wrist. The sleeve of his jumper had ridden up. Black ink curved around the inside of his skin.
Two simple words.
That’s mine
Your stomach lurched. Without thinking, you looked down at your own wrist. To the words that had always stained your skin. Words you’d laughed about with your mates.
Can I see that?
Your fingers slowly brushed over the faded script.
Tim saw where you were looking. His entire body went still.
“So..” Your voice barely worked. “It was you.”
He closed his eyes. “Yeah.”
“You knew.”
“I’ve always known.”
“Since when?”
A long silence. “Since I was nine.”
You couldn’t breathe.
“I met you once.” His smile was impossibly soft.
“On Gotham Beach. You thought I was trying to steal your shovel.”
His eyes shimmered. “And then..” Very gently, almost reverently, he repeated the words that had altered both your lives. “‘That’s mine.’”
His gaze drifted to your wrist.
“I don’t think..” He swallowed. “…I took another proper breath after that.”
The room was silent again.
“So all of this..” Your voice broke. “all these years… were you?”
There wasn’t a second of hesitation.
“It’s always been me.” He stepped closer.
“I don’t expect forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I know you’ll hate me.” His eyes finally met yours again. Filled with absolute, devastating devotion.
“But I need you to understand one thing.”
His voice became impossibly quiet. “I never wanted a prisoner. I wanted my soulmate.”
He laughed through tears.
“I just wasn’t strong enough to live in a world where I’d already found you.”
His lips trembled. “…and then had to spend the rest of my life pretending you belonged to somebody else.”
Another tear slipped down his cheek. “I’ve built companies. Saved cities. People think I’m clever.” He smiled weakly.
“But the smartest thing I’ve ever done..” His gaze softened with an affection so overwhelming it hurt to witness. “…was finding you.”
He looked around the room. “And the worst thing I’ve ever done was bringing you here.”
His shoulders finally gave out beneath the weight he’d been carrying for years.
He sank slowly onto his knees. His head bowed. His hands rested uselessly in his lap.
“You can hate me.” His voice was barely audible.
“You probably should.”
Another shaky breath. “But…”
He looked up at you with the same expression he’d worn in the airport. Like a man placing his entire existence into someone else’s hands. “…please don’t leave me.”
“I don’t know how to exist in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”
Outside, the wind stirred the trees beyond the window. Somewhere, impossibly far away, a plane crossed the morning sky. The holiday you’d planned would go on without you.
Photos would be posted. Memories would be made. Life would continue. Just not yours. Not anymore.
Perhaps soulmates weren’t proof that fate was kind.
But simply proof that fate existed.
Please reblog and comment!! :)
12K+ words, 70K+ characters, 2K+ sentences, 1K+ paragraphs, 43 minute average reading time, 1 hour 7 minute average speaking time.
Thinking about Damian Wayne becoming obsessed with you, the intern at Wayne Enterprises who loves a very specific species of animal. You have your screensaver and background on your work computer set as your favorite animal, plus a few cute knickknacks and a themed calendar in your cubicle.
Bruce tells him to see how the office staff in the building are doing, framing it as an employee satisfaction check. After a raised eyebrow from his son, he sighs and tells him to go try to make a friend. Damian begrudgingly goes off and while the rest of the staff are doing their jobs, he sees you watching a baby animal compilation of the animal that your cubicle is themed around. He stands over your shoulder and watches the show until you notice him and yelp.
You were terrified. One of the boss's sons was right there, the one with the reputation for the worst temper, and you were absolutely positive that you'd be fired. You wince and prepare to be thoroughly berated.
Instead, Damian began rattling off facts about the species of animal, native habitat, and the animal's natural behaviors. You politely nodded along and after a while, began telling him facts as well and showed him a live stream of a zoo enclosure with the animal inside. Damian nodded approvingly before leaving.
Bruce had to stay late for a meeting about a week later. He expected to come home to an argument or to his children studying. What he didn't expect was to come home to Damian with one of his employees gagged and chained up on the couch in the main living room. Damian was happily petting the top of your head and had tucked a plushie of your favorite animal under your arm earlier in an attempt to make you feel more comfortable. He had also put a sweater with the animal's face on it over your shirt, telling you how cold Gotham could be, then turned on the massive TV to the live stream that you had shown him. You looked, understandably, very upset about your situation as you sat silently on the couch.
"Father, Drake and Grayson have proven to be inadequate companions. I have taken initiative and made sure that I have found an acceptable one. They enjoy tea and animal facts. They will be staying with us for the foreseeable future." Damian stated bluntly, not even bothering to look up at Bruce as he continued to pet the top of your head.
"Damian, you can't just kidnap someone--" Bruce attempts before being cut off.
"I have revealed our secret identities to them. If they do not stay, they will be in mortal danger and could put the entire family in further danger. Besides, they have already been introduced to all of the animals and it would upset all of them if they were to leave the manor. This is for the best. You understand, don't you, Father?"
SYNOPSIS. You're tired. Tired of endless calls, of their obsessive behavior, of them. So you block them. Trying to cut them off. But that doesn't mean they make it easy for you.
PAIRINGS. Yandere!batboys x Fem!reader
FEATURING. Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne.
NOTE. English is not my first language so I'm sorry for any mistake.
DICK GRAYSON
You block him at 2:03 AM.
He sees it at 2:05.
It’s quiet in his apartment — lights off, half empty Chinese takeout on the counter, and your name sitting cold and grey on his screen.
User not found.
His chest goes hollow. Like freefalling. Like watching someone step off a ledge.
You always answered him. Even when you were tired. Even when he’d send too many messages, too many calls, too many I just wanna make sure you’re okay.
He scrolls through your old texts. The heart emojis. The goodnights. The voice notes. He can’t breathe through the silence that’s suddenly there.
By morning, he’s knocking on your door. Smile too bright, voice too gentle, eyes too desperate.
“Hey, uh— I think your phone’s acting up. I couldn’t reach you last night.”
He laughs like it’s a joke. Like his heart isn’t cracking behind the sound.
Because Dick doesn’t rage when he’s hurt — he drowns in it. Slowly. Quietly. Smiling through it, still trying to earn forgiveness for something he doesn’t even understand.
And if you don’t open the door, he’ll just sit outside your building. Hoodie up. Phone in hand.
Waiting for the moment your status turns green again.
JASON TODD
You block him, and the silence feels like gunfire.
He’d been trying to play it cool — fewer texts, shorter calls, trying not to scare you off. But when the message doesn’t deliver… when his number suddenly goes from blue to green…
He knows.
“Really?” he mutters, jaw tight, tossing his phone across the couch. It hits the wall and falls face down.
He paces. Lights a cigarette. Doesn’t smoke it. Just watches it burn out.
Then he opens another app. Makes a new account. Finds you in thirty seconds.
Your last post was two days ago. You look happy. You’re with friends. You’re smiling.
And for some reason, it makes his hands shake.
He tells himself he’s not mad. That you’re allowed to need space.
But he’s already halfway to your place before he finishes the thought.
When he sees your light on through the window, all that anger drains out and leaves him hollow.
He stands there in the rain — helmet under his arm, soaked to the bone — whispering to himself, She hates me now, huh?
Jason won’t knock. He won’t text. But you’ll find little things the next day:
Your bike fixed. Your door lock replaced. An envelope on your windowsill with the note,
“I get it. You needed to breathe. Just don’t disappear completely, doll. You don’t get to vanish on me like that.”
TIM DRAKE
The moment you block him, he knows.
Not because he was texting you — but because he’s monitoring your activity like a man possessed. The last seen. The status. The tiny things only someone deeply, unhealthily in love would notice.
Then, it’s gone.
Your profile picture.
Your updates.
Everything.
For a moment, his brain stalls. Then it spins.
He checks his own messages — all marked “not delivered.”
He checks your socials — no trace.
Then his heart twists into something sharp. You blocked me.
He tries to rationalize it. Maybe it’s an accident. Maybe your phone broke. Maybe—
But no. You don’t accidentally erase someone from every corner of your digital life.
He doesn’t sleep that night. Instead, he stays up tracing the digital ghost of you — backup numbers, mutuals, archived messages.
He tells himself it’s to understand. To fix it.
When you wake the next morning, there’s an anonymous email in your inbox.
“You blocked me, but I still worry about you. Eat something today. Please.”
No name. No address. But the tone — that soft care, the kind that bleeds control — you know it’s him.
You’ll also notice your favorite coffee shop app glitching. The one you frequent daily? He pre paid your usual order.
Tim doesn’t confront you. He lingers. Watching from every shadow of the digital world, making sure you’re safe — even if you don’t want him there.
DAMIAN WAYNE
He doesn’t notice at first.
He assumes you’re ignoring him — as if such insolence could possibly last.
Then Alfred tells him he’s been glaring at his phone for an hour.
He tries to send another message. It doesn’t go through.
Blocked.
The word feels foreign. Like an insult. Like a wound.
He doesn’t shout. Doesn’t panic. Just sets his phone down and stares at it in the quiet of the manor.
Then he gets up. Grabs his coat.
Because Damian doesn’t believe in distance. You can’t just decide not to exist in his world anymore.
He finds you easily. He’s trained to. He moves like shadow — steps silent, eyes burning with something between anger and heartbreak.
When he finally stands infront of you, he doesn’t yell. His voice comes low, deliberate, edged.
“You presume too much power, beloved.”
You tell him you needed space. That he’s too intense.
He breathes sharply — almost laughs, but it sounds painful.
“Too intense,” he repeats, as though the phrase itself is absurd.
Then, quieter, “You think blocking me erases what’s between us?”
He takes a step back, jaw tight, eyes glimmering with something fragile beneath the anger.
“Do as you wish,” he says at last, voice trembling just slightly. “But don’t think for a moment I won’t still protect you. Even from afar.”
And true to his word, he does.
No contact. No messages. But the moment someone bothers you, the shadows move.
Because blocking Damian only removes him from your phone.
Not your world.
do not repost, modify, translate or plagiarize in any way on any platforms. thank you for reading :)
(A/n: Papa's BACK! omg with the school year wrapping up, hopefully I can crank out more chapters soon! also I have so so many ideas that I want to write for that I'm super looking forward to having the time to actually do!! Enjoy!!
Also, for this one, Alfred's calling you Miss/Master but as the story progresses and he starts talking to you more often, I'm probably gonna choose either one (most likely Miss since I'm more likely to slip up and use that one). As previously mentioned, I'll try to keep most things in the story gender neutral (I might make mistakes ngl, but lmk and at the end of the series I may do a final audit and fix them))
Why's your family trying to connect so hard with you after so many years of neglect? Well . . . I guess its not all that bad- why are they staring so hard???
(Masterlist)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next time your eyes opened, it was with much more mental clarity than you'd had in a while. Your head still throbbed and the pain meds were definitely wearing off, but you had basic needs to tend to, and one of them was refreshing yourself.
You'd been given a sponge bath while at the hospital before getting discharged, since the doctor expected that you wouldn't be able to take a shower for the next few days (which sucked, but it's not like you were going anywhere or doing anything to get sweaty either so it was mostly just the internal itch of being musty).
You hobbled over (still feeling a little funky from all the excitement of the last day and a half) to the en-suite and winced your way through brushing your teeth and actually washing your face for the first time in too long.
Years of basically taking care of yourself meant that you had a medicine cabinet and multiple drawers stocked up with the essentials. You tried your best to clean up with some dry shampoo for your roots and bruise cream for your green knees, all the while taking care not to bend too far forward or back.
You also, from the top shelf of your medicine cabinet, pulled out a small bottle of store brand pain killers. This were in there mostly for little things like headaches and stomach cramps, but according to your chart, a higher dose of these would work for your concussion pain too.
So down the hatch they went, before you got changed into something different and actually stepped out of your room for the first time in a while.
For not quite the first time, you were grateful about having a room on the ground floor, since you were most definitely not making it down any stairs for a while, the effort would likely send you tumbling back down and landing like the family guy death pose.
Speaking of media, your phone and all other electronic devices had been notably missing since the museum, and you were on the hunt to find them. The doctor had said no screens, but there wasn't really much else to do right now, so at the very least couldn't you put a podcast on at low volume for a little fun?
You kept hobbling your way to the kitchen, hovering near the wall for stability, and stepped through the arched entrance to Alfred standing over something sizzling at the stove. He turned to acknowledge you, face mostly impassive except for a single arched brow, which was usually the most emotive he would get.
"Out of bed so soon, Miss/Master (Name)? I could have sworn you were on doctor's orders to not exert yourself."
Alfred hadn't talked to you at such length for a while so you took a second to think before responding.
"I feel okay, to be honest, not as bad as yesterday, for sure. I took some painkillers a little while ago so the headache's starting to subside, I'm just kinda hungry."
Alfred had a way of making you feel small with the way he seemed to convey so much disappointment with only his eyes, never falling so low as to voice his displeasure. The old man was more secure in his place in this household then you were, so you were under no false pretenses that his show of decorum was more of a defensive shield against those he didn't seem to like, such as yourself. Should he cuss you out tomorrow, his job was at no risk of termination. (More likely they'd finally find a reason to throw you out.)
When you were younger, when your whole world tilted on its axis and you became just another ghost in the manor, Alfred's change in behavior had cut deep. In the place of a man you once saw as your grandfather, all warm smiles and cookies and infinite wisdom shared over steaming tea, was the overwhelming grief in his eyes whenever he caught you sitting in Jason's old spot in the library, reading his books or bunched up in his blankets.
He'd looked almost sick the first time he saw you playing alone in the sunroom, eyes locked on the empty spot next to you. You knew Alfred just couldn't look at you after Jason died, whether it was from guilt or resentment didn't matter.
As you got older, the sadness shifted to a heavy disappointment. Alfred Pennyworth would never do something as ill mannered as scoff, but the way he looked at you was enough to get the message across. He'd served three generations of Waynes now, and by far were you the most unremarkable of the bunch.
You weren't a billionaire philanthropist, nor were you trying to be, you weren't Batman or Robin, you didn't help out with the mission, and you didn't stand out at galas or in high society. You were just you, and for Alfred, that didn't seem to be good enough.
For him, it was easy to push you to the side, he had a million other things to take care of, people to stitch up, you could keep yourself alive for a little while without him right?
All that to say, the way he was staring at you was unfortunately familiar, upset at your presence, but forcing himself to stay within the bounds of polished manners. The only thing that was slightly different today was how he seemed to be unsatisfied at your answer, only continuing to watch you squirm, still just barely though the threshold of the kitchen. Usually, he'd take any response as sufficient proof of life and leave it at that.
To be honest it was bringing back unpleasant memories of how the Riddler had stared at you, that uncanny gaze knowing exactly what you were thinking and planning to wring the right answers out of you.
He cleared his throat, pouring out what seemed to be a broth of some kind into a serving bowl.
"(Master/Miss) (Name)? Are you quite alright?"
"Sorry, what? I uh- checked out for a second."
Again, he looked very unimpressed.
"I asked about the medication you mentioned, what was it and how much did you take, exactly? I know your father meant to keep you on a strict schedule so I imagine this won't please him to hear."
You rattled off what you remembered, some off-brand variety you'd got off the bottom rung of shelves the last time you needed a refill.
Alfred turned back to the his work for a moment, pulling out a batch of Yorkshire puddings from one of the many ovens (oh great it was monthly Sunday roast day, when Alfred got all patriotic for his motherland and decided to subject the rest of the family to a classic British spread. Usually with his skill in the kitchen, it was pretty good, but you weren't fully sure if you could keep down something so heavy right now. Oh well.)
"Hm. Well, dinner will be served in the next 20 minutes, so it would be wise to take a seat now, before the rest of your family comes down, making a ruckus as always."
He had a point, you weren't really in a state to try and shove past whichever combination of robins would be brawling on the floor by the time they all got downstairs, so you made your way over, sliding into the same seat you'd been in on Friday.
~~~~~
Tim was the first one down, eyes darting wildly around the dining room before they zeroed in on you. He moved to take his seat across from you.
"(Name)! There you are, I was looking for you! Well, more like I was gonna help you from your room to the table, but anyway- How are you feeling? You should take your meds after dinner."
You awkwardly threw him a double thumbs-up from across the table, "Yeah, I er- already took some, so I think I'm good for the night, probably just gonna eat and go back to bed."
You noticed how he scrunched up his brows when you mentioned taking your meds already.
The off-brand version wasn't even that bad! It was the same stuff mostly, just cheaper. So much hate and for what?
"Oh, uh, okay, sure, yeah, just let Bruce know, he's been trying to keep you on a schedule."
"Yeah, Alfred told me." Bruce and his fucking schedule. Medication was medication, what was the big deal? Either way you'd basically be taking the same thing, no?
Tim just nodded and pulled out his phone, typing away furiously for a few seconds before putting it face-down turning back to you.
"Sorry, WE work," He laughed for a second, "Um- did you sleep well? I still remember my first time getting taken by the Riddler, I was shitting myself."
He was smiling, but you weren't. For a second you felt bad, what you went through yesterday is what he'd been accustomed to for so long.
The first time he got taken by the Riddler was when he was 13. You remembered this vividly because Bruce had gone near insane. Batman stopped pulling his punches that night, and Tim's Robin, not for the first time, turned him away from going too far.
"No, no nightmares, I knocked out after the meds pretty much. I didn't dream at all."
He beamed at you, tired eyes crinkling at the corners, "That's good. You need all the rest you can get."
"Hey Tim, do you know where my phone is?"
His face didn't change in the slightest, "Yeah Bruce has it, the EMTs gave it to him when you were being taken to the hospital."
"Can I get it back, I wanna-"
"No."
"What."
"No."
His smile didn't move an inch, "Doctor's orders, remember? No screens, loud noises, harsh lights, reading, exercising, or otherwise strenuous activity for at least the next week."
That wasn't what you remembered. You frowned, pushing through the remainder of your headache to try and remember the exact instructions you had been given.
"No wait, I could have sworn he said no screens only for the first 48 hours, then I can get them back, and the rest of the stuff's not a problem since I don't do most of that anyway. Except for the reading, but I can read on my tablet or something."
Tim put up two fingers, "Two things. First, it hasn't been 48 hours yet, has it? And second, that's mostly a suggestion, the longer you spend off of your screens the quicker your recovery will be. So Bruce thinks you should try to stay off of your devices for at least a week to start with, then we can start to reintroduce them, like 10 minutes a day to start. You work your way back up, under careful monitoring, of course."
"What the hell? Whadyamean? Tim, I can't just stay offline for a week, I have so much homewor-"
"Oh you don't have to worry about that for a while."
"What are you talking about, I've at least got to-"
"No, Bruce talked to the school already."
That gave you pause, "...About?"
He fiddled with a loose thread on the sleeve of his hoodie, "You have the next week off, and after that it'll be on a day-by-day basis to see if you're cleared to go."
"Tim-," you were gearing up to fight about this, fuck it. If you couldn't go to school, what were you supposed to do all day? All you currently had was your life outside of the manor's walls and online, what were you supposed to do without both?
The rest of the family started to file in, as Alfred carried over dinner from the kitchen. You didn't have time to finish your thought as Jason slid into the seat next to you.
Oh fuck, wasn't this a little too familiar?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(A/n: Chapter 12!! Getting into the throes of it now! Please please please, as always, feedback is much treasured so let me know what you think or any thoughts, comments, and guesses. (👀))
summary: they stopped on this little island to quickly rest and restock, but the they didn’t plan on encountering you. after defending them publicly, the crew just knows that you belong with them
content: yandere behavior, eventual romantic connections between you and most of the straw hats, platonic!chopper, franky, and brook, alluded criminal activity, instant attraction, drinking,
wc: 6k
18+ only, MDNI PLEASE AND THANK YOU
read just one night: part 1 here | read part 2 here | read part 3 here | read part 4 here
honeymoon arc part 1 | part 2 | part 3
looking glass arc part 1 |
The tavern was loud in the way all good ones were; full, warm, and just a little bit on the edge of becoming a problem. Laughter spilled over clinking glasses, boots scraped against wooden floors, and somewhere in the corner, a chair tipped just enough to suggest someone had already had too much.
At the bar, though, there was a problem. A man with moss-green hair sat rigidly on one of the stools, fingers tapping against the wood before stilling entirely.
Roronoa Zoro did not like being ignored.
His gaze flicked toward the bartender again, still occupied. Leaning far too comfortably across the counter, laughing low at something one of the girls down the bar had said, completely uninterested in anything else happening around him.
Zoro’s jaw tightened in frustration as he’d already asked. Twice and nothing.
“Tough luck.” The voice came from his side, casual and amused.
Zoro turned slightly and you stood there like you’d always been there, elbow resting against the bar, gaze following his toward the bartender with mild interest.
“He’s not going to come over,” you added, almost thoughtfully.
Zoro huffed once through his nose. “Yeah. I noticed.”
There was a beat, then—
“I could help you with that.”
That got his attention. He glanced at you properly this time, sharp and assessing, like he was trying to place you in a category and hadn’t quite decided where you fit yet.
“Oh yeah?” he said.
You smiled. Not wide or sweet, but knowing.
“Yeah.”
A small tilt of your head toward the bartender, and Zoro caught the flicker of something in your eyes.
“Watch.”
And before he could respond, you pushed off the bar and slipped into motion. The first thing he noticed was that you didn’t rush. You moved like you belonged there, like the space would shift and accommodate for you if it need to. By the time you reached the bartender, your posture had softened, your expression brightened just enough to catch his attention without looking like you were trying.
It worked immediately.
Zoro watched as the bartender straightened, grin widening, focus snapping entirely to you as you leaned just slightly over the counter. He couldn’t hear everything you said over the noise, but he didn’t need to.
There was a laugh, yours, followed by a light touch to the bartender’s wrist. Overall, a quiet exchange that had the man nodding quickly, already turning to grab bottles.
Zoro leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. Huh.
A few minutes later, you returned, noticeably not empty-handed. Very much not empty-handed.
You set down one, two, three bottles in front of him until there were eight lined up neatly along the bar.
Zoro blinked once, then looked at you to see that you were already holding two for yourself.
“Figured that might last you a while,” you said lightly. “Buy you some time until the bartender does look over here.”
There it was again, that look. That subtle curve of your mouth like you two were in on something no one else was. You gave him a small wink, then turned to leave, and just like that, you were gone.
Zoro watches you disappear into the crowd, the noise of the tavern settling back into place like nothing happened. Eight bottles sit untouched in front of him, his fingers curl loosely around one, but he doesn’t drink, at least, not yet.
Not when his attention is still fixed on the space you left behind, and the impression you left him. A slow exhale leaves him. “…Interesting.”
He leans back slightly, gaze sharpening, no longer unfocused anymore, not idle. You peaked his attention in a way that he can’t name yet, but it provduces a desire to keep you close and nearby.
‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿
By the time you slipped back through the crowd, the tavern hadn’t quieted, it never did, but it had shifted slightly.
“There you are.”
One of your friends waved you over, leaning in as soon as you got close.
“You’re missing it.”
“Missing what?” you asked, already letting yourself be pulled into the edge of their table. Another one nudged you, barely containing a grin.
“The blond.”
You followed their gaze. And, oh.
There was a blond man sat at the far end of the tavern, as close to the kitchen doors as the seating allowed, body angled just slightly toward the narrow window where plates passed through. If his attractiveness didn’t grab your attention, that it would have been the way he wasn’t drinking, wasn’t talking, or even paying attention to the room.
His entire focus was locked on the kitchen, more specifcally, on the chefs. Your eyes narrowed just slightly, interest piqued.
“…He’s not even looking at anyone,” one of your friends whispered.
“No,” you murmured, already standing. “He’s not.”
You approached without hesitation, wanting to know more about this mysterious man. He didn’t notice, at least, not at first, because he seemed distracted. A frown was on his face, not one that marked annoyance, but more of the ‘offended’ variety.
“…He’s overcooking it,” he muttered under his breath.
You blinked, not expecting that to be the first line of interaction between you two.
“Oh?”
While the mysterious stranger still didn’t look at you, you at least know he heard you due to his affirmative grunt before continuing the conversation.
“He added the seasoning too early,” he continued, voice low, attempting to show some restrain “It’s going to burn the flavor right out and—”
You smiled, slowly. “And I’m guessing you could do better?”
“Obviously.” Immediate, and automatic, but still not looking at you. You huffed out a quiet laugh. This man was definitely different.
“I could get you in there,” you said.
And that is what did it. He finally turned and for the first time, he took notice of you. There was a flicker of something across his face—fast, sharp—like his brain had to catch up to what his eyes were seeing.
You, standing there like you hadn’t just been casually listening to him critique a kitchen mid-service. Like you hadn’t just offered something ridiculous with complete confidence. For half a second, he just stared.
And then, everything about him shifted.
Posture straightening, expression softening, and a new sense of charm clicking into place like second nature.
“—Mademoiselle,” he breathed, already halfway to standing. “I didn’t realize I was being graced with such—”
You tilted your head, cutting him off with a small smile, charmed despite yourself. “Do you want to fix the food or not?”
He paused for a beat, and just like that, the flirtation stalled. Not gone, at least, not completely. Just…redirected.
His gaze flicked back toward the kitchen window, to the view of the chef flipping the meat too soon, causing Sanji’s eye to twitch.
“…Yes.”
You didn’t give him time to rethink it. “Then come on.”
You turned, already moving, trusting he’d follow. He did, immediately. He was halfway convinced he could follow you anywhere.
The kitchen door swung open with a soft creak as you stepped through, but you didn’t go far. You stopped right at the threshold, careful, respectful, not crossing into the space where only staff were meant to be.
Sanji’s heart skipped a beat at the implicit care and respect that you provide the kitchen and the chefs by showing that little bit of restraint. By understanding, seemingly implicitly, the rules and boundaries of a kitchen. Something he can’t help but be in awe by because of the lack of decorum shown on the ship by his crew.
“Hey,” you called lightly, catching the attention of one of the cooks nearest the door, causing the man to glance up and his shoulders to relax when he saw you.
“Oh, it’s just you. Hey sweet girl.”
There it was, recognition and familiarity.
“You busy?” you asked, already knowing the answer after years of hanging around.
He snorted. “Always.”
Your smile turned a little sharper. “Yeah, I figured.”
Your gaze flicked past him, toward the man currently manning the stove, the one Sanji had been watching.
“Head chef still out?”
A groan from somewhere deeper in the kitchen as more pots and pans clatter and the bustle of the kitchen moves on as more orders are placed.
“Don’t remind me.”
Perfect. At least for you and your new friend. You leaned slightly against the doorframe, casual, comfortable. “I’ve got someone who can help.”
That got their attention. Skeptical glances were thrown at you and the blond, who got a more detailed assessment from the other chefs. Your head tilted just enough toward the man, tone light and teasing, “He’s been complaining from the dining room. This is—“ you stop yourself quickly realizing that you never introduced yourself to him or got his name. Actually this whole plan was crazy, but something in you told you it was right.
The man sees your slight panic and smoothly steps in, “I’m Sanji, and I can do more than complain,” he said instead, stepping forward just enough to be properly seen.
Confidence, controlled, and certain. The room shifted just enough to accomodate their newest chef who seemingly just knows how to take control.
One of the cooks raised a brow. “Oh yeah?”
Sanji’s gaze flicked to the stove, to the pan that’s worsening the mistake of that meat.
“…You’re burning it.”
Silence, then—
“Alright,” someone muttered. “Show us.”
And while you didn’t need to stay, Sanji being welcomed into the kitchen, accepted even. He was where he needed to be, you’ve done your second good deed of the day. But still, you lingered, just long enough to watch and see him in his element.
Sanji noticed, even as his hands moved, corrected, adjusted, and took over without overstepping, his attention always flickered back to you.
You smiled, small and certain, before mouthing the words clearly, “You’ve got this,” to him. And then you were gone.
The kitchen didn’t slow, didn’t pause, but something had changed. Sanji exhaled once, steadying himself, then refocused.
The pan, the heat, the timing. Everything where it should be, under control, exactly how he liked it.
His mind drifts back to the doorway, to you.
To the warmth of your smile, fleeting but lingering in a way that doesn’t make sense. He exhales slowly, steadying himself as he plates the dish.
Focus. Timing. Balance.
But the thought slips in anyway, soft at first, then settling. You noticed. A faint smile tugs at his lips.
You understood.
Something deeper follows, quieter and warmer, and definitely far more dangerous. His movements don’t falter, if anything, they sharpen.
I’ll make sure you never have to look anywhere else again.
‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿
The kitchen door swings shut behind you, the warmth and noise muffling just slightly as you step back into the hallway. For a moment, it’s quiet, or as quiet as a tavern like this ever gets.
You exhale softly, rolling your shoulders once before turning toward the back corridor. You might as well take a second.
The hallway is dimmer, lit by a couple of low lanterns, the hum of conversation fading the further you move away from the main room. You’re halfway to the bathrooms when you pause. There’s something… odd.
A small figure stands in the middle of the hall, shifting from foot to foot, clearly distressed.
“…Which one do I even use…?” a voice mutters, quiet but very real.
You blink, tilt your head, then step closer. “Uh… is everything okay here?”
The figure startles slightly, and turns, revealing a small, furry creature with a little hat.
You stare for a beat, attempting to process the sight infront of you.
“…Hi,” he says.
You blink again. “…Hi.”
Another pause, before his small mouth opens and he starts blurting out, “I need to use the bathroom, but I’m technically a male, but the guys bathrooms are always really gross, and I didn’t bring Nami or Robin and I don’t know if I could use the women’s and—” He trails off, clearly overwhelmed.
You stare at him for a second longer before you start laughing, not to be mean, but simply because you were surprised. The look you gave him after made Chopper feel warm and cared for.
“Well,” you say, stepping a little closer, “that’s a fair dilemma.”
He huffs, ears drooping slightly. “It is!”
You glance between the two doors, then back at him.
“…Alright.” A small shrug. “Go ahead and use the women’s.”
His eyes widen. “Really?”
“Yeah,” you say easily. “I’ll stand out here.”
You gesture vaguely toward the hallway.
“Make sure no one bothers you.”
“…You’d do that?”
You give him a small smile. “Of course.”
A few minutes pass as you lean lightly against the wall, arms crossed, listening to the distant noise of the tavern filtering back in. It’s almost peaceful. Almost.
Inside, there’s the faint sound of movement, a bit of fumbling—
and then—
“Um, thank you again!” Chopper calls through the door.
You huff out a small laugh. “You’re welcome.”
There’s a pause before he continues softly.
“You’re really nice.”
Something in your chest softens. “Don’t get used to it,” you tease lightly.
“…Too late,” he mutters.
The door creaks open, and Chopper steps out, looking noticeably less stressed.
“See?” you say, pushing off the wall. “Crisis handled.”
He nods quickly. “Yeah! Thank you, I—”
He stops and so do you, because now you hear it. Not the usual tavern noise, buy something sharper.
A raised voice, hen another angrier. Your brows knit slightly, concerned about what you’re going to find outside those doors.
“…Do you hear that?”
Chopper’s ears twitch. “…Yeah.”
Suddenly there was a crash and the sound of glass shattering loud enough to echo down the halloway, causing your stomach to drop.
“That—”
“—wasn’t good,” Chopper finishes.
You glance at him., then toward the main room, then back at him.
“…I should probably—”
“I should check on them,” he says immediately.
Of course he does, you sigh softly.
“Yeah, come on.”
You round the corner together and step right into tension. The tavern has changed completely. People have backed away from the center of the room, forming a loose circle around the source of the noise.
A table lies overturned, shards of glass scatter across the floor, and at the center stood the man from the bar earlier and a group of other people, facing off against a group of men you recognize all too well.
Management.
Your stomach sinks.
“…Oh, that’s not good,” you murmur.
Because this? This isn’t just a misunderstanding. This is about to become a problem, a big one.
Chopper shifts beside you. “They’re gonna get in trouble.”
You exhale slowly, already thinking and calculating. “Yeah, probably.”
Your gaze sharpens slightly. “But maybe not for long.”
The air in the tavern has gone sharp, not loud or chaotic, but stretched thin, as if something was about to snap. From the edge of the crowd, you and Chopper watch as the circle tightens around them.
The Straw Hats, as Chopper calls them, stand at the center. While they’re seemingly still, it’s cleared they’re not relaxed, not even close. Tension radiated through their bodies, clear that one wrong move and this tentative peace we’ve found ourselves in will be over quickly.
A familiar figure steps out from the kitchen, Sanji. He’s wiping his hands slowly, methodically, like he’s finishing one task before stepping into another. His gaze sweeps the room once, clearly assessing and calculating.
Then it lands on you, then Chopper, then back to you, just for a second, long enough to give a small shake of his head. Subtke and deliberate, a clear message for both of you to stay back and out the way.
“Got a problem?” a voice sneers, grabbing your attention back.
Chase, of course it’s him. He’s one of the leading trouble causers in the town, but since his family is rich and helps funds a majority of the projects, no one ever wants to make a clear stance against him, leading Chase to think he can handle anyone.
He’s currently leaning too close to the crew, coming across as overally aggressive, and way too comfortable with getting in someone’s space.
Specifically, Roronoa Zoro.
You understand Chase’s facination, seeing the man carry around three swords is a clear indicator as to who he is. And to stand up to an infamous man like that and live to tell the tale would be an incredible and impossible desire for Chase to give up on.
Zoro hasn’t moved, not an inch. However, his presence has changed. His hand rests near his sword now, loose and ready.
Chase must not have noticed, or maybe he does, and thinks it’s a game.
“I said,” Chase continues, louder now, “you don’t just walk in here, cause trouble, and think you can leave without paying for it.”
Behind him, voices layer in. Snide comments toward Nami, a laugh directed at Robin, both dismissive smf disrespectful, clearlywrong.
While Luffy no longer looks angry, he’s also still not smiling, and yet that makes it worse.
Sanji steps into place beside them, rolling his shoulders once as he loosens his tie, slow and controlled.
“Oi,” he says, voice low. “You’re getting a bit too comfortable.”
Chase scoffs. “And who the hell are you supposed to be?”
Sanji’s expression doesn’t change, but the air around him does.
Zoro’s fingers tighten, just slightly, but enough to tell you that whatever patience they have is quick to run out.
You exhale, before nodding slowly to yourself.
“Yeah,” you murmur under your breath. “This is about to get bad.”
Chopper shifts beside you. “They’re gonna fight—”
“I know.”
And that’s exactly the problem. Because if they do, it blows beyong just a tavern fight, a becomes a whole town problem, and there’s really no need for all of that. Not when you’ve worked so hard to not have attention be brought around you.
So before it happens, before the first swing, before the first blade leaves its sheath, bou move. You slip between bodies, through tension, into the center like you belong there, because you do.
And then, without any further thought, you place yourself between them; management and the crew, making sure to face management head-on, surprisingly, giving your back to these pirates you’ve never fully met.
There’s a shift immediately, while subtle, it was all the more real. Behind you, something in all of them stills. Not because the threat is gone, but because now, you’re there. Attempting to be their savior, and recklessly gave them your back without looking at them once to check, because for some reason, you didn’t feel like you needed to.
Your attention is on Chase.
“Wow,” you say lightly, glancing at the broken glass, the overturned table. “You’re really committing to the drama tonight, huh?”
He blinks, thrown off, before his face morphs into a scowl again.
“Stay out of this,” he snaps.
You tilt your head slightly. “Mm. I would.”
A brief pause before you continue, “But you’re making it everyone’s problem.”
A couple of people nearby shift, listening now, watching a scene between this well known high-born citizen, and this seemingly random girl.
You step just slightly to the side, subtle and controlled, positioning yourself so you’re not blocking the crew completely, but still in the middle, the focus. Your mind is running fast as you shift through tons of informations bits you’ve gleamed by listening around town to be able to turn this situation around fast.
“Let’s think this through,” you continue, voice calm, easy. “You’ve got a full tavern, a paying crowd, and a reputation you barely manage to keep as it is.”
A flicker crosses Chase’s face, and there it is, your glowing sign. You press just slightly.
“If this turns into a full fight?” you add, gesturing lightly around the room, “chairs broken, people hurt, word spreads…”
A small shrug.
“…That’s bad for business. Especially if the Marines need to get involved.”
Murmurs ripple outward in agreement, and discontent at the thought of Marines coming to your island. While your island is relatively small and filled with lovely citizens, known as the perfect shopping and trading center, there are still the seedier parts of town that thrive and actually help support the town’s economy. And it needs the Marines to stay far away to keep the businesses going, as well as anyone who potentially harms that business is seen as a traitor to the town.
Behind you, a flurry of actions and emotions passes through each of the present members. Zoro doesn’t move, but his grip loosens, just a fraction as he watches you charm the crowd and their opponents into your wishes.
Sanji’s gaze drops briefly to you, admiring your stance and your fierce bravery in the way you’ve placed yourself between them without hesitation or fear. But as much as there is attraction and appreciation, there is a small part of him that is frustrated that you didn’t listen to his earlier warning to stay away from danger. To have you risk your life for them, for him, and potentially get injured? He could never live with himself with that.
Chase exhales sharply, seemingly unwilling to let go of this potential new challenge, regardless of the negative consequences sure to come his way if he continues down this path. “Then maybe they should’ve thought about that before—”
“Before what?” you cut in smoothly with a small smile, not at all sweet, but sharp and pointed, clear that you’re done playing around.
“Before sitting down? Ordering drinks? Existing?”
A couple of people laugh, quiet, but enough. You lean in just slightly, lowering your voice just enough so that others can’t hear, but that it still feels personal.
“Or is this about something else?”
A beat, before your gaze flicks, just briefly, to the staff behind him. To the kitchen, to the missing head chef, before back to him before briefly looking at the scratches that are on his hand. Clearly stating that you understand and are willing to call him out on it, without having to say it directly.
Chase’s jaw tightens, since he knows what you’re doing.
But more importantly, so does everyone else, as shown by the various whispers that start picking up around the room.
“…Clean it up,” you say lightly, gesturing to the mess. “Let them finish their drinks.”
A pause before you continue. “And we all pretend this didn’t happen.”
Silence.
Behind you, Luffy tilts his head slightly, equal parts interested and amused.
Robin watches you carefully, trying to understand you and your motives. Why would you stand up in defense for this crew that you know nothing about? What is it about you that makes you so willing to risk yourself in the defensive of others. She couldn’t figure you out, not yet, but she felt something in her come alive at this new puzzle that was placed all wrapped up beautifully infront of her.
Nami’s eyes narrow, not in suspicion, but in calculation. While she was appreciative of not being kicked out of another establishment, a sort of joke between the crew that has morphed to include an ‘incident free’ calendar that they just started three days ago. So while Nami was glad the streak was still on and alive, looking hopeful of reaching sometime of longevity this time around, she was cautious feeling that noone does a good deed like that without wanting or demanding something in return. And there is no way to ensure that what you ask for, it within the realm of positibility for either.rr
Sanji doesn’t look away, enamoured by the sight you make, taking charge in this situation and not giving up until you got your way, focused on your epic adventure.
And Zoro—
Zoro’s watching your back.
Chase exhales sharply through his nose before looking around and seeing the large crowd that had amassed during the conversation. Even someone as blind as him could recognize that the crowd was noot on his side, before finally stepping back.
“Fine, for now.”
The tension breaks, not completely, but enough that people start moving again, freely talking and breathing easily. You don’t turn around immediately, letting the moment settle and your heart beat slow down a bit. Then you glance back over your shoulder just slightly to tell the crew with the newly joined Chopper,
“Try not to start anything else.”
Casually, as if you didn’t just stop a fight and this is a normal everyday encounter for you to step in defense for total strangers.
Out of the corner of your eye you get a glimpse of your friends clearly searching for you, making you realize you have to go. With one last smile, you leave to join your friends and reassure them that you were fine.
Behind you, something has changed beyond the situation and the outcome they were expecting. You’ve grabbed their attention in one way or another, something you would learn would be dangerous. All because you took action, without question and without knowing them, seemingly following your blind instincts to protect.
Something a certain captain completely understands and approves of. Luffy grins, slow and bright, feeling certain that a type of adventure is in the air, and that it all has to do with you.
As if knowing what their captain was thinking, the remaining crew straightened up, feeling on the edge of something.
Zoro’s gaze lingers on your back as you walk away, steady and certain. His thoughts couldn’t help but circle back to the confident steps, the certrainty in your actions of what was the right move. A confidence like that is difficult to fake, especially in a high pressure situation like that, even more so between people of authority and unknown people like them. Zoro takes a look to the left and sees Robin already staring, a shared thought between them. They had to learn more about you.
Robin’s smile is soft, and slightly knowing. There’s something about you that draws her eye, something beyond your bravery that clearly captivated her crewmates. Something about you that felt vaguely familiar, but she just couldn’t remember how.
Sanji watches you go, something warm settling into something sharper. He lights another cigarette in an attempt to calm himself. Meeting you was an unexpected joy, and he felt something beyond his typical admiration for women with you. But you putting yourself in danger like that, makes his heart clench with an emotion he cannot yet name. He won’t let yourself be risked like that again.
Nami crosses her arms, thoughtful. You were quick on your feet, and obviously a smooth talker to be able to get the management off their backs, and the crowd onto their side. You’d be valuable, an asset. And Nami is certainly about advantages, especially when it could mean saving her nakamas in the future.
And Chopper, now on Zoro’s shoulders, looks at you walking away with quiet admiration.
She protected everyone…
A small, certain thought follows.
…We should keep them safe too. It’s only right.
‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿
By the time you and your friends spill out into the street, the tension from earlier is gone, and instead is replaced with laughter. It’s easy, bright and alive, enjoying the few moments you allow yourself to relax and enjoy the night, enjoy yourself.
“Did you see that?” one of your friends laughs, looping their arm through yours as you walk. “You just—“ she waved her hand in front of her casually as she continued, “walked in and fixed everything like it was nothing.”
You grin. “It wasn’t nothing, of course I was scared”
“Oh please,” another cuts in. “And what was that look you shared with the green-haired one?”
You blink. “What look?”
“The look,” she insists, nudging you.
“And the blond!” someone else adds. “Don’t think we didn’t catch that either.”
You roll your eyes, laughing. “You’re all dramatic.”
But you don’t deny it, not really. You’re not sure what to say about the connections you obviously felt with each man, but you weren’t ready to delve into that yet.
As you guys continue down to the next location, you can’t help but notice how the street is lively, lanterns glowing warm overhead as you make your way toward the next bar. Music drifts through the air, voices and movement blending into the perfect night, the air cool now that the sun is completely gone.
There was a loud noise that drew all of your attention across the street to see the same people you were thinking about gathered loosely near a food vendor. The captain stood at the front in mid-order, pointing enthusiastically at something on the grill while a man in overalls beside him nods along.
The rest are spread out nearby, relaxed, but not unaware, because the moment you step into view, they all notice, and something subtly shifts.
Postures straighten, attention sharpens but not in a guarded way, they were way to cautious to potentially scare you off by coming across tough in that way. They were sure to project an auro of open and interested as not to scare you off.
“Well, well,” one of your friends murmurs. “Looks like your admirers are back.”
You huff softly, but you’re already walking closer, a part of you excited that your paths cross this soon. Pirates are known to stop by the island, but they’re quick to leave, especially after an encounter like they had in the tavern. You’ve heard the stories of this crew, but to see their confidence in person is a completely different experience.
It’s Catburgular Nami who greets you first with a small smile, eyes sharp but warm. “I was wondering if we’d see you again,” she says.
You tilt your head slightly, returning the smile. “Same here.”
Her gaze flicks briefly to your friends, then back to you.
“You handled that situation earlier… very well.”
You shrug lightly. “Someone had to.”
A soft hum from beside you as the one known as Nico Robin steps in just slightly, her presence calm, composed, observant.
“You seem quite skilled at placing yourself exactly where you’re needed. That’s a healthy skill to have,” she says.
There’s something in her tone, not accusatory or even questioning, just noting, a bit of healthy curiosity.
You smile, just a little sharper this time. “Or maybe I just don’t like messes.”
Robin’s lips curve faintly. “An admirable trait.”
You’re aware of it then, the weight of their attention at a whole crew. Instead of feeling intimidated, a part of you feels relaxed in their prescence, despite knowing only tales and barely anything personal about them.
There’s a subtle shift of energy behind you, feeling warm, curious but focused, giving you just enough time to prepare for the upcoming conversation.
“Hey!”
You turn, and there he is, the famous Captain Monkey D. Luffy, grinning like he’s already decided something.
“I’m Luffy,” he says, like it’s the most important introduction in the world, as if there are people that don’t know about the Devil Fruit user.
You blink, then smile. “Yeah, I figured.”
He beams immediateky, unfiltered but no less certain, “I like you.”
Your friends snort behind you, amused by the various conversations you’re partaking in, something completely different from your normal routine. They care for you but know that you’re still tightly guarded. Seeing this group of people bring you such clear joy, made them beyond happy.
You laugh softly. “You don’t even know me.”
“Don’t need to,” he says easily.
And somehow, you believe him. The crew behind him shares some looks and laughter, familiar to the typical explaination from their captain, understanding that it’s a gut instinct.
The rest of the introductions blur into something warm and easy. Voices overlapping, laughter shared, the groups seemingly eaily blending together. Sanji reappears at your side at some point, offering food without asking, while Zoro lingers just close enough to be part of the conversation without saying much. Usopp jumps in and out with exaggerated stories as Chopper sticks near you more often than not.
It’s easy, almost too easy. So when you suggest, “Hey, we’re heading to another place—bar hopping. You should come.”
It doesn’t feel like a big decision, just a continuation.
Some of them exchange looks, quick, silent. then—
“Yeah!” Luffy says immediately.
And just like that, they join you.
‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿
The bar is louder than the last, dimmer and closer, the kind of place where conversations blur together and time slips your friends peel away toward the counter, chasing drinks and laughter.
Leaving you, standing there with them all surrounding you. The shift is immediate, while not visible, it was felt. They’re all closer now, not crowding, just determined to be in your atmosphere, present and focused.
Luffy, Sanji, Chopper and Nami are all immediately next to you, Zoro, Usopp and Robin sit opposite from you, completing a circle. Luffy leans forward slightly, his voice dropping in tone, clear that he’s serious and focused on this moment with you, and your answers. “Have you ever thought about being apart of a pirate crew?”
You blink, completely thrown by the question. “…What?”
He doesn’t laugh, and doesn’t brush it off. He leans in just a little, eyes steady. “Imagine it,” he says.
“Every day a new adventure. Somewhere you grow and challenge yourself and never have to settle.”
There’s something in his tone, something pulling and inviting, holding infinite promises for you, all under the premise if you would just leave with them.
“Where you can be free.”
“Be treasured,” Nami adds smoothly. You glance at her to find her gaze is steady, certain.
“Never doubting your value or purpose. Everyone on a pirate crew provides.”
“Be protected,” another voice follows, this time low and grounded. You don’t even have to look to know it’s Zoro. “Never worry about having to be the strongest or the smartest.” A pause. “Just… you.”
“Where you can be cared for,” Sanji says softly.
You meet his eyes, earnest and unwavering. “Loved.”
Your breath catches, just slightly.
“What would it take?” Luffy asks again.
And suddenly, it doesn’t feel like a casual question. It feels like something is waiting on your answer.
You’re quiet for a moment, thinking, running through the logistics of leaving this town. It was always the plan, you’ve probably stayed too long already. But to leave like this?
“Well…” You sigh softly, tilting your head. “For how long?”
A small shrug. “I could do a overnight trip, or a quick adventure. The store can be closed for that long.”
A faint laugh. “But to leave forever?”
You trail off, thinking.
You don’t see it, the way their expressions shift subtly and quickly.
Your gaze drifts instead, to your friends over at the bar, laughing and waiting for their oder. You smile, soft and fond, smile only growing once your friends make eye contact with you. Their faces light up and they wave over to you joyfully.
You wave, enjoying this moment. And that’s your answer.
“Well,” you say quietly, turning back. “I’d miss my friends.”
A small breath.
“And I’d worry about them.”
Honest, simple, and real.
“I’d need them to say it’s okay for me to go, before I could join anyone forever.”
Silence, not empty and not awkward. Just, still.
Because you don’t notice the way something settles over the group. Not heavy or obviously, but decided.
Luffy smiles, slow but happy at the answer. “Okay.”
And just like that, you’ve set the terms, and they’ve already accepted them.
Luffy watches you turn back toward your friends, thoughful and content. That’s easy.
Nami’s gaze follows yours, calculating. They just need reassurance, that’s something they can provide for you in spades.
Sanji’s jaw tightens slightly, his eyes soft but focused. We can give them that.
Zoro exhales quietly, already done thinking about it. Then we’ll make it happen.
And you just smile, unaware of the way your future is slowly but surely changing.
a/n: happy birthday to me! this idea appeared in my head and has not left me alone, so i've written this. while this is not my normal dc content, i figured i should be allowed to post what i want today! this is my first time diving into writing one piece and this idea has hit me and i must write it! so i hope you enjoyed it, and sorry if they’re ooc!
as always, likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated, and here's a kiss from me to you!
respond below if you would like to be added to the taglist for this series!
trigger warnings: self-harm, petty Reader, isolated Reader
main m.list series m.list good ending m.list
Fathers day has always been a big event for the Wayne’s, while most of his children don’t take him that seriously nor have a good relationship with him they always got together and did something for Bruce.
However, his first biological child, (Name), would rather eat glass than celebrate Father day.
However when they expressed this to their siblings and Alfred, they scoffed. Telling you to put your anger aside for at least today.
So you smiled during the dinner, but you didn’t give him anything. No instead, you smashed your glass and ate a few shards.
Duke too shocked to react, Dick too slow to stop you, Jason scared to even move, Cassandra holding Damian back from doing anything rash, Barbara quickly cleaning up the remaining glass with Stephanie and Alfred rushing to get the medical supplies.
Bruce? What does Bruce? He just stood there.
This day, he isn’t reminded of what as great parent he is. No, he’s reminded of you being willing to die to leave this family.
Prompt: Reader finding out about batfam being vigilantes
Characters mentioned: Bruce, Dick, Damian, Alfred, Tim, and Jason
ₓ ˚ . ୭ ˚ ○◦ ˚ . ˚ ◦○ ˚ ୧ . ˚ ₓ
Everybody has been irritating you these past days. Dick keeps trying to get you to work out with him and it’s obvious that he just wants to show you how strong he is and his calisthenics skills. You and Jason keep arguing about random things. Last night, you had started fighting over him using your stuff without permission. And as much as you love Damian, he keeps bothering you while you’re studying and as much as you try telling him you literally cannot afford to fail, he keeps telling you that Bruce would be more than happy to pay for tuition. Talking about Bruce, he’s barely even there and when he is he keeps talking about how hard college is for you and he keeps asking on if you would ever marry rich. Honestly it’s embarrassing how stupid they think you are.
Today, like every other day, everyone was bothering you. You were originally in your room when all three of them were doing rotations on coming to your room to try and get your attention away from your studies and onto them. Annoyed you remember that Bruce isn’t in the manor today…meaning his study is empty. Bruce had given you the key to his study room for god knows what and looks like you finally got some use for it. You enter it quietly, making sure no one saw you go in. You quickly locked the door behind you and tiptoe your way onto his desk. You let out a huge sigh as you set down all your stuff down. You see a recent family picture on his desk, you were in the middle rolling your eyes while everybody had invaded your personal bubble.
You had gotten some work done and went to take a small break when you noticed a certain clock looked a little off. Weird, why would his clock of all things be misplaced. You go to adjust it when all you have of a sudden a secret passage way opens up. Woahhh is Bruce secretly a serial killer or something. Ummm, do you really want to go investigating this, I don’t mean this is exactly what those white people be doing in horror movies before they die. You go down the passage way to an underground cave? You continue to wonder around as you see an unmasked batman and Red Robin searching something up. “Yo what the fuck?”
ₓ ˚ . ୭ ˚ ○◦ ˚ . ˚ ◦○ ˚ ୧ . ˚ ₓ
Hey sorry for the short story but I was really busy today but I’ll write a part 2 with their reactions if you guys want. I’m planning on making this a series of stories regarding nanny!reader so please if you want to see anything, just let me know. Bye my lovelies!!
